A case of joint suicide of a young woman and man who became acquainted in a suicide web forum and used this platform to make an appointment to commit suicide together is described. During their investigation, police were able to reconstruct the events by analysing the computer of the deceased ...

  Carbon monoxide (CO) inhalation is one of the leading methods of suicide in the United States. A sharp increase in suicide by inhaling the CO produced from burning charcoal has been reported in parts of Asia; however, the incidence of this method has not been determined in a U.S. ...

Poverty, hunger and demand for agricultural land have driven local communities to overexploit forest resources throughout Ethiopia. Forests surrounding the township of Humbo were largely destroyed by the late 1960s. In 2004, World Vision Australia and World Vision Ethiopia identified forestry-based carbon sequestration as a potential means to stimulate community ...

Previous studies have established a positive relationship between gambling and suicidal ideation and suicide attempts. Limited studies have investigated the role of gambling in completed suicide. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of gambling behavior among suicides and to compare the correlates of nongambling and gambling with and without ...

Hitherto, the story of HIV/AIDS in South Africa is, to a large extent, one of lost opportunities. Whereas the country has one of the worst epidemics in the world, consecutive national AIDS strategies have been repeatedly marked by failure over almost three decades. Understandably, South Africa's most recent HIV/AIDS policy, ...

Poster presented at the University of Pretoria Health Sciences Faculty Day, Pretoria, South Africa, August 2008

The HIV/AIDS epidemic has profoundly impacted South Africa's healthcare system, greatly hampering its ability to scale-up the provision of antiretroviral therapy (ART). While one way to provide comprehensive care and prevention in sub-Saharan African countries has been through collaboration with traditional healers, long-term support specifically for ART has been low ...

South African AIDS policy has long been characterised by suspicion on the part of President Mbeki and his Health Ministers towards antiretroviral therapy.1,2 The Minister of Health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, resisted the introduction of antiretrovirals for mother-to-child transmission prevention (MTCTP) until forced to do by a Constitutional Court ruling – and ...

Paper presented at the 2nd Southern African Conference on Sustainable Development in the Built Environment, "Strategies for a Sustainable Built Environment", Pretoria, South Africa, 23-25 August 2000

The present study examined children's understanding of illness in a peri-urban community in South Africa where AIDS is prevalent (N = 138). Results suggest that children were surprisingly knowledgeable about AIDS at an early age, and may have even erroneously analogized from AIDS to the flu. Furthermore, all age groups ...

PURPOSE: To find out the impact of community based rehabilitation (CBR) as implemented by mid-level rehabilitation workers known as community rehabilitation facilitators (CRFs) on people with disabilities (PWD), their families and the communities in South Africa. METHOD: A qualitative research design was used with an emphasis on participatory methods with ...

On 13 June 2008, the High Court of South Africa (Cape of Good Hope Provincial Division) ruled against a producer of alternative remedies and the Government of South Africa in a case regarding vitamin supplements being marketed as treatments for HIV/AIDS. The court found that the vitamin supplements were "medicines" ...

Litigation can be a useful tool for achieving policy and legal change, but only if accompanied by broader advocacy and education efforts. In this article, based on her oral poster presentation at the conference, Priti Patel describes the approach of the HIV/AIDS Programme at the Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC).

The aim of this study was to assess the potential for coexistence between rural people (living adjacent to a protected area) and predators (from the same area) ranging onto communal land. Ninety members of local communities bordering Manyeleti Game Reserve, which is contiguous with Kruger National Park, South Africa were ...

Some countries (e.g. Brazil) have good reputations on AIDS policy, whereas others, (notably South Africa) have been criticized for inadequate leadership. Cross-country regression analysis reveals that these 'poster children' for AIDS leadership have indeed performed better or worse than expected given their economic and institutional constraints and the demographic and ...

Even after 300 years of indigenous forest protection as well as 100 years of plantation forestry, no forestry map of South Africa was available. The development and availability of LANDSAT images in the early 1970s opened up possibilities to use satellite data. A project was initiated in 1981 to compile ...

The purpose of this study was to examine the presentation of AIDS-related stigma and knowledge within the political context of the South African government's response to the AIDS epidemic. It was during the 2000 - 2004 period that key government officials publicly challenged the orthodox views of HIV/AIDS, with the ...

The one-humped camel (Camelus dromedarius) was first introduced to German South West Africa (Namibia) for military purposes in 1889. Introductions to the Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) in 1897 and Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in 1903 were initially with a view to replacing oxen that died of rinderpest. Disease risks attendant ...

Africa has become an increasingly important region to the United States from a national and global security perspective. Moreover, Africa's security problems are complex, ranging from traditional concerns such as resource competition to nontraditional issues such as health, environment, and terrorism. Addressing such problems is an overwhelming undertaking that requires ...

Comanagement has recently become the most popular approach for reconciling land claims and biodiversity conservation in South Africa and beyond. Following the resolution of land claims on protected areas in South Africa, comanagement arrangements have been created between the relevant conservation authorities and the land claimant communities who are legally ...

An estimated 5.5 million people are currently living with HIV/AIDS in South Africa, 4.9 million of them between the ages of 15-49, 18.8% of the total population in that age bracket (Department of Health, Republic of South Africa 2006). The potential medical and social benefits of anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) would ...

Over the past 10 years, unique business imperatives in South Africa have led to innovative risk product design, some of which are still unfamiliar to the rest of the world. The main drivers are: the unique mix of first- and third-world societies in our country, and an energetic marketing force ...

PURPOSE: By 2010, an estimated 18.4 million children in Sub-Saharan Africa will be orphaned by AIDS. Research in South Africa shows that AIDS orphanhood is independently associated with heightened levels of psychological problems. This study is the first to explore the mediating effects of stigma and other factors operating on ...

Culicoides biting midges (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae) are responsible for the transmission of a large number of pathogens to livestock and wild animals. In this study the presence of the genus, using light traps based at four different sites within the National Zoological Gardens of South Africa, was investigated during 2002-2004. In ...

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: Dry sex refers to the use of plants to dry and contract the vagina, a popular practice in Africa that damages vaginal tissue and facilitates the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Here we show that dry-sex practices are not limited to Africa. Afro-Surinamese women frequently use genital steam ...

BACKGROUND: Rising mortality rates caused by HIV/AIDS in South Africa have substantial and lingering impacts on poor households. METHODS: This is a descriptive paper using a new dataset of daily income, expenditure and financial transactions collected over a year from a total of 181 poor households in South African rural ...

Measuring the household level economic impacts of AIDS-related deaths is of particular salience in South Africa, a country struggling with a legacy of poverty and economic inequality in the midst of an HIV epidemic. Household panel data that span more than a decade permit us to resolve many of the ...

HIV-1 group M subtype B was the first HIV discovered and is the predominant variant of AIDS virus in most countries outside of sub-Saharan Africa. However, the circumstances of its origin and emergence remain unresolved. Here we propose a geographic sequence and time line for the origin of subtype B ...

This paper addresses the role of emergent organisations like Fundacion Moises Bertoni (FMB) in biosphere reserve conservation. FMB is a Paraguayan NGO that manages the Mbaracayu Forest Nature Reserve (MR), the largest remnant of the Upper Parana Atlantic Forest in Paraguay. The area is inhabited by indigenous Ache and Guarani ...

Poverty in Africa has been rising for the last quarter-century, while it has been falling in the rest of the developing world. Africa's distinctive problem is that its economies have not been growing. This article attempts to synthesize a range of recent research to account for this failure of the ...

Under-served rural areas--home to over half of people in sub-Saharan Africa--bear a heavy HIV/AIDS burden. We present a case study of the existence and quality of support networks available to people with AIDS and their carers in a South African rural area. Drawing on 45 interviews and 13 focus groups, ...

Despite current efforts to combat HIV/AIDS through behavioural change, ingrained socio-cultural practices such as widow inheritance in south-western Uganda has not changed. Low education, unemployment, dowry, widows' socioeconomic demands and the inheritor's greed for the deceased's wealth, influence widow inheritance. Voluntary counselling and testing is needed for the widows and ...

AIDS continues to be a death sentence for many individuals living in South Africa where it remains the leading cause of death. Little is currently known about what it is like to experience the loss of a loved one to AIDS from the South African perspective and how to assist ...

In sub-Saharan Africa, the exchange of sex for material support-labeled "transactional sex" by Western observers--is claimed by some to be a major driver of the AIDS pandemic. Transactional sex is described as akin to prostitution, a degraded form of sexual expression forced on vulnerable women by economic desperation. Using evidence ...

Scenario planning or futures studies have their origin in military planning, but have also been used with great success in the private sector, most notably in the energy industry. UNAIDS and the South African financial services group Metropolitan each recently published a set of scenarios regarding the future impact of ...

The aim of this paper is to describe the optimisation of Waste Minimisation/Zero Waste strategies into an already established integrated waste management system and to present a Zero Waste model for post-consumer waste for urban communities in South Africa. The research was undertaken towards the fulfilment of the goals of ...

OBJECTIVES: To estimate the burden of disease attributable to sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in South Africa, to identify the factors contributing to this burden, and to review successes and failures in reducing this burden. DESIGN: Years of life lost (YLL) and years lived with disability (YLD) were estimated using different ...

This qualitative study explored how South Africans view and cope with AIDS-related loss. In-depth interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of 18 bereaved adults living in KwaZulu-Natal, a province that has been severely impacted by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Data were analysed according to the conventions of qualitative research. Participants ...

Psychotherapy in South Africa is confronted by issues that reflect the emerging nature of the nascent democracy. Historic racial patterns have characterized the production of psychotherapists and psychologists who are predominantly white female and who often have difficulty mediating the socioeconomic and ethnic reality of their black clientele. Despite this ...

This paper analyses how TIME magazine represents sub-Saharan African women in its coverage of HIV/AIDS. As rates of infection escalate across the continent, researchers are increasingly emphasising the need to understand the socioeconomic and cultural contexts that make women particularly vulnerable to infection. Yet popular media representations of AIDS continue ...

Literature on the impact of serious AIDS epidemics anticipates severe outcomes, and places special emphasis on the epidemic's likely effects on productive and governance capacities. Implicit in many impact scenarios is the assumption that the effects are distributed more or less uniformly across society, and are channeled 'naturally' through and ...

The Business and AIDS think tank held in Durban, South Africa, in June 2006, included a discussion of the policies with which different types of employer could address HIV/AIDS in southern Africa. Breakout groups discussed the role of large and small private sector firms, the public sector, and parastatal organizations. ...

The five countries with the highest HIV prevalence rates in the world are situated in southern Africa, and South Africa, with an estimated 4.7 million people living with HIV (PLWA), has more cases of HIV/AIDS than any other country. AIDS stigma and discrimination continue to impact on those living with ...

The article takes a hermeneutic approach to exploring a selection of visual representations of the African body in relation to the issue of HIV and AIDS in Africa. In particular, it argues that the trope of ‘deficiency' (‘lack'), wherein Africa is constructed as dirty, degenerate, decaying and dying, continues in ...

AIMS: To determine the prevalence of the novel CYP2B6 functional polymorphism 983T>C in Papua New Guinea where HIV/AIDS poses a significant health problem. METHOD: We genotyped Papua New Guineans (PNG, n = 174), West Africans (WA, n = 170), and North Americans (NA, n = 361). RESULTS: The polymorphism was ...

Churches have attracted controversy for how they have dealt with AIDS: they have been criticized for moral stigmatism, yet lauded for their charitable works. Our purpose was to examine what churches were doing at the grass-roots level to deal with the impact of AIDS on their communities. This study was ...

Mobile phones are a crucial mode of communication and welfare enhancement in poor countries, especially those lacking an infrastructure of fixed lines. In recent years much has been written about how mobile telephony in Africa is rapidly reducing the digital divide with developed countries. Yet, when one examines the evidence ...

Revised age estimates for the primate-bearing localities of the Jebel Qatrani Formation (Fayum area, northern Egypt) have provided a new perspective on primate response to early Oligocene climate change in North Africa. Environmental changes associated with early Oligocene cooling might have driven the local extinction of at least 4 strepsirrhine ...

BACKGROUND: Road-traffic crashes and fatalities constitute major social and economic issues in South Africa. They are a major cause of morbidity and mortality comparable to HIV/AIDS, homicides, and some chronic diseases. METHODS: Road-traffic accident data for the year 2003 obtained from the Department of Transport, Pretoria, South Africa were used ...

On 28 August 2006, the High Court of South Africa denied the government's attempt to suspend an earlier Court order to provide antiretroviral (ARV) treatment to eligible HIV-positive prisoners in Westville Correctional Centre (WCC). In reaching its decision, the Court considered, among other factors, the irreparable harm and neglect that ...