Results tagged “south africa” from AIDS & HIV

SPENDING on dedicated HIV and Aids programmes by national and provincial government departments will exceed R5bn within the next two years, according to today’s budget.

The Treasury says in its budget review that an additional R1,65bn has been committed to provinces over the next three years for their Aids treatment programmes.

The programmes are currently being run at 272 sites, and the health department says over 210,000 patients there are on antiretorviral (ARV) treatment.

A new US-funded clinic in downtown Johannesburg is giving hundreds of South African HIV sufferers a first chance to afford anti-retroviral drugs by offering them at a third of the market rate.

For years, patients with the AIDS virus have either had to dole out thousands of dollars a year for anti-retrovirals (ARVs) and accompanying treatment or else try their luck with the groaning public health system.

But now the Zuzimpilo medical centre, based in a rundown building at the heart of Johannesburg's inner city, aims to relieve some of the pressure on both cash-strapped patients and over-stretched hospitals.

JOHANNESBURG - South Africa, which has the world's second heaviest caseload of HIV/Aids, has seen average life expectancy fall by 13 years since 1990 to 51, a new study shows.

A survey by the Medical Research Council and Actuarial Society of South Africa revealed that life expectancy this year was "estimated to be 49 years for males and 53 years for females" or an average of 51.

"By 2005, the HIV/Aids pandemic had already taken about 13 years off life expectancy," the report stated.

Researcher Debbie Bradshaw said life expectancy in South Africa in 1990 was 64 years, but had dropped to 51.

For two years she laboured in the shadow of her boss, South Africa's notorious health minister, who declared garlic, lemon and beetroot a suitable treatment for the country's victims of Aids.

Now Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, a plain-speaking 55-year-old Quaker, is being feted as a heroine by health campaigners, Aids sufferers and much of South Africa's media, for daring to end a decade of denial on the disease by the ruling African National Congress.

In the space of a few weeks the deputy health minister has helped turn government policy on its head.

Businesses, and consequently South Africa’s economy, lose big money each year to HIV/Aids. A study commissioned by AIC Insurance last year showed that South Africa lost about R12-billion a year because of workplace absenteeism, of which between R1,8-billion and R2,2-billion could be attributed to HIV/Aids.

And it is also worrying that according to the Actuarial Society of South Africa, close to one in five South Africans between the ages of 20 and 64 are infected with HIV -- a large part of South Africa’s workforce.

Thus, for many companies, looking after their HIV-positive employees has become a necessity. HIV/Aids has become the new brain drain.

But, large corporations with the financial resources to implement HIV/Aids workplace programmes are making inroads into addressing the problem in their sectors.

JOHANNESBURG, Nov. 30 (Xinhua) -- HIV/AIDS kills an average of 950 people in South Africa every day, and 71 percent of these deaths occur among people aged from 15 to 49, a new study has indicated.

About 2 million South Africans had died from AIDS-related illness since the start of the epidemic in the early 1990s.

This year, deaths due to AIDS accounted for 350,000 of the estimated 740,000 total fatalities, which was equivalent to 950 AIDS-related deaths a day, according to the study conducted by the Actuarial Society of South Africa (ASSA), in collaboration with scientists from the Medical Research Council and the Center for Actuarial Research (CARE) at the University of Cape Town.

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - South Africa will unveil a new plan aimed at fighting its HIV/AIDS crisis on Friday, seeking to calm bitter debate and revamp policies that have thus far done little to stop the epidemic.

South Africa's AIDS battle has been two-fold, with doctors and community groups struggling to help an estimated 5 million people infected with the virus and government officials fending off critics who accuse them of mishandling the disaster.

The criticism peaked at this year's world AIDS conference in Toronto, where South Africa was accused of "lunatic" negligence on HIV/AIDS by activists, doctors and even a U.N. official.

SYDNEY, Nov 27 (Reuters) - Australian biotech firm Virax Holdings Ltd. (<VHL.AX>) said on Monday eight big mining companies had agreed to pay for trials of its HIV vaccine in South Africa, which is battling one of the world's worst AIDS crises. Virax applied to South Africa's drugs regulator in September for approval to conduct a clinical trial of its VIR201 HIV vaccine, with global mining giant BHP Billiton Ltd./Plc. (<BHP.AX> <BHP.L>) as the main sponsor.

On Monday it said another seven mining and metals firms from Australia, Britain, Japan and South Africa had offered funding.

Details of the total funding were not disclosed, but Virax spokesman Tim Duncan said the typical cost for trials of this size was usually between $5 million and $6 million.

Diagnosed with HIV 23 years ago, David Patient thought he would never see the day when he could insure his life. Until the launch late last year of AllLife, an innovative insurance newcomer, the few life insurers taking on clients with HIV offered very limited cover and charged prohibitive premiums.

But AllLife is specifically targeting customers carrying the virus, offering them more affordable insurance for up to three million rand ($410,000). They are now able to protect their loved ones and get mortgages. This is changing perceptions of a disease often considered to be a death sentence.

The average probability of an Aids death in South Africa would appear to make life cover prohibitively costly for people with HIV. But extremes rather than averages apply to HIV/Aids: people who monitor their health and are treated tend to do well; most of the rest die quickly when Aids sets in. The first group's risk profile is 'no worse than diabetics', according to AllLife.

JOHANNESBURG (AFP) - South Africa has sought to deflect criticism that it was dragging its feet on the rollout of AIDS drugs, saying some 60,000 people had been added to the programme in the past year.

The health ministry also defended controversial Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who has drawn flak for championing beetroot and garlic to combat the disease and for failing to speed up the rollout of anti-retrovirals.

"The minister of health can announce that the number of people initiated on antiretroviral therapy through the Comprehensive Plan on HIV and AIDS has increased to 235,378 by the end of September 2006," spokesman Sibani Mngadi said in a statement.