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 The Beat It! Team, in this episode's special report, aimed to repute the questioning of the efficacy of HIV tests and testing kits by interviewing scientists about testing procedures. The Team also spoke to Christopher Moraka about being sick days before Christopher passed away from AIDS defining illnesses including oral thrush. Christopher's oral thrush was treatable but because of Pfizer's patent on fluconazole Christopher could not afford it. In the Beat It! Support Group the members discussed experiences of disclosing to family and friends.
In this third episode of the 2000 series the Beat It! Team included a profile of Mary Smith, a woman from Atlantis in the Western Cape who found life after diagnosis. In the Special Report we looked at the successes of the PMTCT programme in Khayelitsha and how the provision of this prevention programme encouraged mothers-to-be to test for HIV. In the Support Group Dr Hermann Reuter answered the members' questions about the progression of HIV and various opportunistic infections. Dr Reuter also gave practical rules for better living with HIV.
In this Beat It! episode we met Queenie Qiza who had words of encouragement for everyone living with HIV/AIDS. Queenie went on to assist the viewers to better understand what we can learn from viral load and CD4 test results and why they are necessary. Queenie's results were not encouraging. Dr Hermann Reuter gave sound and practical advice about nutrition for People Living with HIV/AIDS. He encouraged HIV positive people to eat as often and as much as they can to counter the weight loss that accompanies the late stages of HIV infection.
In this episode we looked at how a badly run public healthcare system unnecessarily put people's health at risk when treatment was available. The episode went on to say that through becoming treatment literate and knowing one's rights, when faced with poor service in the public health sector one can demand better service.
The Beat It! team spoke to Jabu Ngumane, diagnosed positive in 1994, and his family about his status and coming to terms with it. In the Special Report women's reproductive rights, femidoms and women's equality was discussed. The conclusion to the report was that by addressing gender inequality society will prevent many new HIV infections. In the Support Group the members discussed their active sex lives post-HIV positive diagnosis.
With an overt political angle this episode of Beat It! looked at the reasons why the successes of the Khayelitsha PMTCT programme were not being rolled out nationally. The results of not rolling out the PMTCT programme was then driven home in an emotional Support Group discussion in which mothers who have lost their babies through mother-to-child-transmission shared their experiences.
In this Beat It! episode the economic implications of not rolling out an antiretroviral treatment plan were looked at. In the profile section Seabelo Kgarosi pointed out how myths and disinformation around HIV/AIDS could lead to further compromised health and well-being.
In this episode we again look at how access to the antifungal drug Diflucan could have saved Christopher Moraka's life. In line with this we followed Zackie Achmat to Thailand where he bought 3000 tablets of generic fluconazole as part of the Christopher Moraka Defiance Campaign against Patent Abuse. In the profile section we also get to meet Benjamin Borrageiro who talked openly about how crack cocaine contributed to a lack of inhibitions in his life and how that ultimately led to his infection with HIV.
In this episode of Beat It! broadcast we looked at the victory for People Living with HIV/AIDS in the Constitutional Court. The court ruled that pre-employment testing was discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional. The episode's Red Noose went to all those organisations that continued to use people's HIV status as a basis on which to discriminate against them.
In this episode the Beat It! team met up with the South African Trade Unions to see what they were doing and planned to do in the fight against HIV/AIDS. They impressed the team so much that we opted to give both the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the National Council of Trade Unions the Red Ribbon Award.
Traditional Healers have a role to play in the response to the HIV epidemic. In this episode the team met with Mercy Manci, a traditional healer, and spoke to her about how she councils and advices her HIV positive patients. We then invited Manci to join the support group where she showed what the major benefit of enlisting traditional healers into the response to the epidemic can be. Traditional healers can and do provide the very necessary emotional and spiritual support that people living with HIV require.
Treatment Literacy has become a key focus area not only for the Community Health Media Trust but also for the Treatment Action Campaign. In this the last episode of the 2000 Beat It! series we look at the treatment literacy workshop set up by the TAC and the Treatment Action Group from New York. This specific workshop was empowering people with information around clinical trials. In the profile section we also met Farieda Abrahams and her sisters. Farieda at this stage had full blown AIDS and would succumb to the disease the following year.
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