For love and money

In the remote villages of Limpopo and Mpumalanga, an innovative pilot project on gender and AIDS awareness offers rural women an opportunity for empowerment.

HIV/AIDS study targets 14-year olds

Thousands of Grade 8 pupils in Cape Town are being encouraged to delay their first act of sexual intercourse and to use condoms when they become sexually active.

Spread the news - not the virus: UKZN action against AIDS stigma

"Nobody needs to live or die in isolation and misery. It's lack of information, understanding and support that kills." These were the words of Fezeka Khuzwayo, former University of KwaZulu-Natal student and HIV-positive social activist, when delivering the University Forum Lecture on Durban's Howard College Campus during its AIDS Action Week in April.

Lingering death in the canefields

Sister Priscilla Dlamini clutched corner of her billowing black wimple as she pointed down the muddy dirt road that runs past the Holy Cross AIDS Hospice in Gingindlovu and disappears into a vast field of sugar cane swaying in the breeze. "The first house, there, the white one, you see it on the right?" she said, her thick finger tracing the path of the road to a thatched roof barely visible through the cane. "The father and the mother died of AIDS, so did the boy and two girls. That pink house over there, seven died. And there. All eight dead." Her hand swept back toward the horizon to cloud-shrouded mountains. "Everywhere between here and there are empty houses. In the mountains, it is even worse. And where there are people in the houses, there are graves beside them."

Education could save millions of youth from HIV/AIDS - report

Efforts by the World Bank to support education could "prove critical in preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS", the Global Campaign for Education (GCE), a coalition of independent civil society organisations has said.

Precedent-setting agreement on AIDS coordination

A landmark agreement to coordinate global efforts to fight HIV/AIDS and increase support was reached by the international community in partnership with UNAIDS early this week.

HIV microbicide tested on SA women

Human testing of a microbicide to prevent women becoming infected by HIV has begun in South Africa and several other countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Buthelezi makes HIV/AIDS personal

Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi's disclosure that his son died of HIV/AIDS has been hailed by HIV/AIDS activists as a move which could lead to the stigma surrounding the pandemic being broken.

Problems with implementing HIV/AIDS caregiver grant

As the number of South Africans infected with HIV rises, home-based care programmes need to be persistently expanded, but most such projects are run by NGOs using volunteers due to a lack of funding, and without an income the unpaid caregivers have trouble supporting themselves and their families.

Gender-based violence increases spread of HIV

Women who suffer violence at the hands of their male partners are more likely to become infected with the HI virus, a new South African study confirms.