Media Watch
Provincial funding fiasco
An article in yesterday’s The Times has reports that “corruption and incompetence” are standing in the way of efficiently spending HIV grants.
Mpumalanga province has been implicated in the under spending of money for HIV grants, having spent only R81-million of its budget which amounts to a whopping R134-million.
TNA ticks all the boxes
A featured article in The New Age (TNA) uncovers the SA prisons system’s secret scourge. Choruses of assenting and dissenting voices, broaching all aspects of the matter allow for an informative and balanced article.
The article opens by recounting one young man witnessing the rape of another in a Durban prison. This ‘hook’ not only draws the reader in through holding off on the hard facts but humanises the prisoner, successfully bringing a society’s cast offs into the public consciousness as living breathing human beings who are capable of pity and fear.
Through the narrative device the article clearly communicates that male rape is wrong because it represents the violation of a living, breathing and feeling human being. But in providing the context of HIV, the writer shows that sexual assault in prisons gains an added dimension as a deadly biological threat which extends beyond prison walls.
You can’t spell STI without HIV
Anyone putting sexually transmitted infections (STIs) on the agenda deserves more than a pat on the back, but not including HIV in a discussion on STIs could them a slap on the wrist.
Today’s ‘The Verve’ section of The Star features a comprehensive discussion of the various STI nasties that “one in two” South Africans will have tangoed with by the time they turn 25.
Chlamydia, human papillomavirus, syphilis, genital herpes and something called molluscum contagiosum (which sounds like a spell straight out of Harry Potter) all feature in this line-up of suspects.
NAT tests: Bloody marvellous!
According to The Star in the past up to two South Africans per year became infected with HIV through blood transfusions, but thanks to nucleic acid testing (NAT), introduced in 2005, that number has dropped to and remained at zero for the past 5 years.
