Media briefs

AIDS is fundamentally a family disease: infections run through families, families carry the burdens of infection, and growing evidence suggests that family-centred approaches to prevention and treatment are particularly effective.

It is therefore not enough to merely provide antiretroviral drugs to mothers and children: it is critical that treatment and care for children are integrated into the broader context of family-support schemes, write Linda Richter et al, guest editors in a special issue of the Journal of the International AIDS Society, published online on Thursday, 24 June 2010.

Teenage pregnancy in South Africa: With a specific focus on school-going learners.  The purpose of the study was to document, review and critically analyse literature on teenage pregnancy with a focus on school-going adolescents.

Minister for Women, Children and Persons with Disabilities, Noluthando Mayende-Sibiya, will attend the launch of the final report of the Joint Learning Initiative on Children and HIV/AIDS (JLICA) study.

The Coalition on Children Affected by AIDS (CCABA) has congratulated Dr Eric Goosby on his nomination to lead PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. CCABA members including the  HSRC also issued a call to increase the focus on children and families in the global AIDS fight.

Child Care Forums provide much-needed services, but their role and relationships with other service providers need to be clarified, said Vuyiswa Mathambo of the HSRC here at the 4^th SA AIDS Conference. Child Care Forums are locally-based groups caring for vulnerable children within their communities.

The Joint Learning Initiative on Children and HIV/AIDS, a two-year, independent alliance of researchers, implementers, policy-makers, activists and people living with HIV, has released its' final report "Home Truths:
Facing the Facts on Children, AIDS, and Poverty", on 10 February, 2009.

The Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) officially opened a research office in a rural area outside Pietermaritzburg this morning, from where three large, multi-year, randomised control trials are being conducted, to continue for the next five years.

"Children have been short-changed in the response to AIDS. They are visible in the photo opportunities and headlines, but mostly invisible in the response to HIV," Professor Linda Richter, of the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa, told the XVIIth International AIDS Conference.

Since South Africa’s transition to democracy in 1994, what shifts have there been in the structure of family life? Have central family events such as marriage, divorce, childbearing and access to resources altered in the post-apartheid period? And how have social, political and economic changes affected family and household structures?

These and related issues are explored in Families and households in post-apartheid South Africa: Socio-demographic perspectives.

Contrary to widespread public perception, arising largely from moral and cultural concerns, there is no evidence that provision of the Child Support Grant (CSG) is a cause of increased youth fertility, conclude Monde Makiwane and Eric Udjo in a report prepared for the Department of Social Development.

A new human resources plan by the Department of Health could potentially halve the number of foreign medical doctors in South Africa

Laurence Fishburne, best known for his role as Morpheus in The Matrix trilogy, is visiting South Africa.

The first book that gives an integrated account of child sexual abuse in southern Africa is now available.
Visit the HSRC Press website for more information about The Sexual Abuse of Young Children in Southern Africa

In an effort to better understand the different dimensions of youth development, and how best to assist them to fully become part of and to participate fully in our democratic society, the HSRC and the UYF on Monday, 9 December, signed a memorandum of understanding. This entails collaboration and research on specific areas issues relating to youth development, youth employment, and youth entrepreneurship.