072009 Curtain Falls On Manims Tenure As Director Of Baxter

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MONDAY JULY 20 2009

SA goal to end mom-to-child Aids infection Focus on TB too, Motlanthe says SAPA and ANSO THOM

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SOUTH Africa must eliminate mother-to-child transmission of Aids, says Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe. “South Africa must ensure that we dramatically decrease the number of infants that are infected so we can indeed have a generation free of Aids,” Motlanthe said at the 5th International Aids Society conference in Cape Town yesterday. “The importance of the virtual elimination of mother-tochild transmission of HIV was reinforced to me in my meeting with the executive director of Unaids, Dr Michael Sedibe,” he said. “We have begun work on strengthening our PMTCT (Prevention of Mother To Child Transmission) programme and the Minister of Health will soon officially launch our accelerated plan to ensure that we meet the targets set in the National Strategic Plan for HIV and STIs (sexually transferred infefctions).” That plan, drafted under the leadership of the SA National Aids Council (Sanac), sets targets for halving the HIV incidence by 2011 as well as providing care, treatment and support to 80 percent of people living with HIV, Motlanthe said. He also called for greater attention to be given to tuberculosis (TB). “We wish to stress that TB is curable even in the

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context of co-infection with HIV, but additional measures to ensure that HIV patients are tested for TB and TB patients are tested for HIV must become the norm.” Motlanthe said he would propose that Sanac also focus its attention on TB. He said a World Health Organisation/Stop TB Partnership review of the national TB programme had found that the scheme had been strengthened since the last external review in 2005, with improved cure rates and decreased defaulter rates. However, there were still problems with the programme. “These include the need for a more coherent strategy for TB/HIV integration; strengthened infection control; and strengthening TB control in the mining industry as well as in the correctional services.” Motlanthe also drew attention to the relationship between poverty and TB. He said the country needed “strong social and equitable economic systems to underpin our health systems”. “It is clear that health conditions and outcomes are related to a range of social determinants,” he said. Motlanthe also mentioned other areas of concern.

“Challenges, however, remain. These include: getting more of our people tested; starting treatment as early as possible; improving adherence; decreasing loss to follow-up; improving laboratory turnaround-times; and strengthening drug-supply management.” However, he said, each of these areas was “receiving the necessary attention”. Meanwhile, Unaids’s Sedibe said it was critical to ensure that the programme to prevent the transmission of HIV/Aids from mother to child was implemented widely as it presented the best chance of eliminating paediatric HIV. “It is virtually eliminated in the rest of the world, and there is no reason why we cannot achieve it in Africa.” Sedibe said he had met members of the South African government to “follow up on the ambitious and inspiring goals” of treating 80 percent of those needing antiretrovirals and halving new infections by 2011”. He said Minister of Health Dr Aaron Motsoaledi had indicated that the government was committed to “picking up the pace of action”. “Political commitment is key to achieving anything. You cannot break the silence without political leadership and political leadership determines the space afforded to civil society input, which brings about the social change needed.”

Stigma driving African HIV rate PARIS: Rates of HIV infection among gays in some African countries are 10 times those in the general male population, researchers said today. They said stigma and poor access to treatment or testing are to blame. A wall of silence, repression and discrimination are amplifying dangers for men who have sex with men in sub-Saharan Africa, the doctors said in a paper published online by The Lancet. Researchers from Oxford University looked at published studies for HIV prevalence from 2003 to 2009. Prevalence among gays in some parts of West Africa is 10 times that for the general male

population, they found. Political, religious and social hostility towards homosexuality is entrenched in many countries, and this breeds isolation, harassment and prejudice, enabling risky sex practices to multiply. “Unprotected anal sex is commonplace, knowledge and access to inappropriate risk prevention measure are inadequate and… in some contexts, many men who have sex with men engage in transactional sex,” the paper said. The paper said secrecy was so entrenched that data about gay sex behaviour in Africa was often sketchy or absent. “There’s surprisingly little known,” said lead investigator

Adrian Smith. “What little evidence we do have suggests that men who have sex with men are a vulnerable group… across sub-Saharan Africa.” The paper said: “In the early 1980s, silence equals death became a rallying cry” for gays in the US. “Nearly three decades later in sub-Saharan African the silence remains, driven by cultural, religious and political unwillingness to accept men who have sex with men as equal members of society.” Around 33 million people have HIV, according to figures issued last year by the UN agency Unaids. Two-thirds of them live south of the Sahara. – Sapa-AFP

Blood donors with flu symptoms told to wait two weeks STAFF REPORTERS THE GROWING number of swine flu cases in South Africa has led the Western Province Blood Transfusion Service to extend its deferral period for donors showing flu symptoms to two weeks. Spokeswoman Leandi le Roux said any donor with signs of normal flu would usually have to wait a week before donating blood. “But now with the outbreak of swine flu, we have prolonged

our deferral period to two weeks. Donors are aware of the criteria and we try to explain the process to them.” Some 70 893 cases of the new H1N1 swine flu have been confirmed worldwide, with South Africa having 119, including 14 in the Western Cape. The illness presents itself with cold- or flu-like symptoms, such as a fever, sore throat, runny nose, nasal congestion, coughing or muscular aches. Le Roux said blood stocks were much better than had

been expected, with blood units of 475ml increasing by close to 1 500 last month. Last year, during national blood donor month in June, 10 426 units were collected, and this increased to 11 837 units last month. “We are working very hard to gain new donors and to educate them about various blood products,” Le Roux said. However, even though stocks were good, the position could change “at any minute” and attendance at mobile clin-

ics was usually low during winter, she said. The non-profit organisation aims to collect 700 units each day. The WP Blood Transfusion Service gained more than 200 new donors last month, but Le Roux said the number of donations had dropped in the first half of this month. Provincial health authorities said there was no reason to panic over swine flu as schools re-open. Western Cape health department spokeswoman Faiza Steyn said national and

provincial medical teams would monitor schools in the event of any cluster outbreaks of the flu. She urged pupils with flulike symptoms to stay at home for a number of days “to speed the recovery process”. G Anyone willing to donate blood can do so at one of the transfusion service’s permanent centres, at N1 City and 22 Long Street, Cape Town. Alternatively, phone 021 507 6300 or SMS 33507 to find the nearest blood donor clinic.

EXIT LEFT: Renowned Baxter Theatre director and chief executive Mannie Manim is bowing out, and will leave the theatre in the hands of his long-time friend, playwright and director Lara Foot Newton, from November. PICTURE: BRENTON GEACH

Curtain falls on Manim’s tenure as director of Baxter RICHIE DUCHON Staff Writer

SOUTH African theatre luminary Mannie Manim says the real beginning of his long and distinguished career as a producer and artistic director was when he saw Athol Fugard’s No Good Friday in his early teens. “It was totally different from the cucumber sandwich, ginand-tonic kind of fare that I’d been involved in,” he recalls. “This was ‘people in accents from the streets where I lived’ kind of thing … it busted my head open and made me realise that theatre can be accessible to anyone.” Manim says that play started his journey as a producer, director and lighting designer for some of the country’s most important political protest theatre of the past 30 years.

ENTERING: Lara Foot Newton Now he is stepping down as head of the Baxter Theatre, where he has served as director and chief executive since 2000. Manim will leave the theatre in the hands of his longtime friend, playwright and director Lara Foot Newton. When she takes over in

November she will become the Rondebosch theatre’s fourth director in its 32-year history and the first woman director. Foot Newton has been working for and alongside Manim for more than 20 years. She even remembers experiencing her own “lightbulb” theatre moment at Manim’s Market Theatre, which he cofounded with playwright Barney Simon in Johannesburg in the 1970s . “That night changed my life in the same way as when Mannie saw (Fugard’s play). I said whatever those guys are doing on stage, I want to do that,” Foot Newton recalls. Manim is well known for having diversified the Baxter’s offerings during his tenure as head of the theatre. He remembers the first director of the Baxter, John Slemon, inviting Manim’s

Market Theatre company to bring its shows to Cape Town in the 1980s. “There was a big commercial segment of the (Baxter’s) programme (then), and we came with a more gritty, current, what we used to call ‘newspaper theatre’ – the kind of stuff that was going on in the townships, where people couldn’t get to in those days,” Manim says. His goal as director of the Baxter was to incorporate those kind of shows into the theatre’s programme. “What I was wanting to do when I came to Cape Town was hear what the feeling was on the ground of the theatremakers in the city and to try to give them a platform to produce their work. “I think we’ve begun doing that,” he chuckles in a modest, self-deprecating way.

Manim says one of the highlights of his tenure at the Baxter was bringing Foot Newton on as a resident director for three years. “Lara brought a direct link with the creative world of South Africa. She’s talking to the new creative forces … and starting to let them know that hopefully there’ll be a home for their work in the Baxter in the future,” he said. Manim says he hopes the Baxter Theatre will remain a place where artists can experiment and where the calibre of the theatre is not judged only by results at the box office. “We really like to see minds challenged as well as seats filled. “And I think if I’ve achieved anything in the nine years, it’s to spread the sense of ownership of the Baxter to all the communities in this region.”

Communities to march for service delivery THE MACASSAR backyarders, propped up by a host of communities from Khayelitsha and Gugulethu, were expected to march to Mayor Dan Plato’s office this morning to demand delivery on services. The backyarders, who recently unsuccessfully attempted to invade

city land, said the march was in support of their demand for land where they could put their shacks, among other things. Housing activist Mzonke Poni said yesterday that the communities planned to engage in “militant action” ahead of the march. – Staff Reporter

Boy, 6, killed in scooter crash STAFF REPORTER

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A SIX-year-old boy, who was riding on his mother’s motor scooter, was killed in a horrific accident in Durban yesterday afternoon. David Williams, who was wearing a helmet and was on the back of his mother Sandra’s scooter died instantly when the scooter collided with a 16-wheeler truck near the Rossburgh station in South Coast Road. “The child was crushed by the truck… the wheels went over him and the helmet,” said Netcare 911 spokesman Chris Botha. The boy’s traumatised mother was admitted to Wentworth Hospital. The truck driver has been charged with culpable homicide. Clairwood residents are planning to protest against high volumes of truck traffic on the roads in the neighbourhood.