April 2, 2014
From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Anine Vermeulen.
Making headlines:
 

A Human Sciences Research Council study reveals there are over six million people living with HIV/Aids in South Africa.

The ANC lambasts the public ‘agenda’ on the Nkandla report.

And, Doctors Without Borders says aid bureaucracy and suspicion threaten to deepen the crisis in South Sudan.
 
 

An estimated 6.4-million people were living with HIV/Aids in 2012, a study by the Human Sciences Research Council revealed on Tuesday.

The findings of the South African National HIV Prevalence, Incidence and Behaviour Survey 2012 were officially launched in Pretoria.

Over 38 000 people were interviewed and almost 29 000 agreed to be tested for HIV. The estimated overall prevalence of HIV increased from 10.6% in 2008 to 12.2% in 2012.

According to the survey, the increased prevalence of HIV in 2012 was largely due to the combined effects of new infections and a successfully expanded antiretroviral treatment (or ART) programme. The availability and use of ART had increased survival among HIV-infected individuals.

 

The African National Congress and its alliance partners on Tuesday lambasted those who attacked the ruling party and its leadership over Nkandla.

ANC Gauteng executive committee member Uhuru Moiloa said there was an agenda set by the media, owned by capital, to come down on the ANC. He was speaking at a National Education, Health, and Allied Workers' Union shop stewards council in Johannesburg.

He said security upgrades to President Jacob Zuma's private Nkandla homestead in KwaZulu-Natal were a necessary investment.

Moiloa assured the shop stewards that the ANC was still a liberation movement committed to the struggle of the working class. He said there was nothing wrong with the republic and its security forces deciding to secure the properties of the president, and assured members that the president of the ANC hadn’t used public money to fund the upgrades.

The humanitarian crisis created by South Sudan's civil war may well worsen this year because of the slow international response and suspicions among warring parties of UN relief efforts, the head of aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (or MSF) said on Tuesday.

More than one-million people have been displaced since December 15, according to the United Nations, including 800 000 uprooted within South Sudan and 254 000 who have taken refuge in neighbouring states.

Bruno Jochum, director general of MSF told reporters in Geneva that “there was very little hope that political talks would be successful in the coming weeks or months”.  All sides indicate a civil conflict that is there to last, unless there is an unexpected diplomatic success, he said.

Jochum said aid donors were much slower to release emergency funds than was the case 20 years ago, and that donor governments were finding it very hard to switch from providing development funds to humanitarian funding. So the crisis may need to get much worse to trigger international aid, he said.

Also making headlines:
 

The World Health Organisation has played down the extent of Guinea’s Ebola outbreak, which is suspected to have killed over 80 people, a day after medical charity Doctors Without Borders warned of an unprecedented epidemic.

Local R&D capability is boosted by the launch of a new Centre of Excellence in Mathematical and Statistical Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand.

And, the Supreme Court of Appeal  has reserved judgment in the appeal of suspended police crime intelligence head Richard Mdluli.
 

That's a roundup of news making headlines today.