Xdr-tb News

At least 6% of people diagnosed with tuberculosis in Khayelitsha township near Cape Town, South Africa last year had a drug-resistant strain of the disease. This was reported by Medicines Sans Frontieres in a report on its pilot programme in the township.

AIDS is killing so many politicians in southern Africa that their deaths are threatening the ability of governments and local authorities to function properly, a Cape Town researcher warns. South Africa alone is losing 28,000 young voters a month to AIDS.

A warning has been sounded by top South African psychiatrist Prof. Matshepo Matoane that the country's combined TB and AIDS epidemics among black soldiers are 'having a lethal impact on its military forces'. Her warning should also be heeded by the US...

Two ancient diseases which mankind had beaten are back with a vengeance. And it's our own fault. Yet , scientists say, we can still stop our growing drug-resistance to malaria and tuberculosis medicine if mankind just stopped overdosing on antibiotics.

A 20-year-old depressed South African woman suffered 100% burns after torching herself Saturday in Soweto; just the latest victim of the suicide epidemic , mainly due to HIV-AIDS . However ''Speaking Books' are now thrown into the fight to prevent them...

A South African high court judge has ordered the country's prisons department to immediately hand over a secret report about the death of a prisoner who was given antiretroviral treatment far too late and died within just weeks of starting treatment.

The Indian Ocean harbour city of Durban has thousands of street urchins. This week they got to talk to the British ambassador Paul Boateng to show him around their brand-new "Safe Space' which opened on Dec 1.

Afrikaners across the entire political spectrum, from famous left-wing dissident author Breyten Breytenbach to the only parliamentarian of the conservative Freedom Front opposition party, warn that the ruling ANC is plunging South Africa into civil war.

The South African health-care system is showing a steady collapse which is worrying health officials countrywide. Yet nobody seems able to turn the problem around - there are far too many patients and not enough medical staff to treat them.