Yearly Archives: 2010
Your goodwill without end
15 December 2010
Dear Friend of Tshikululu
Amid all the din and clutter of national debates and news of hardship and suffering, we are constantly and profoundly impressed by what you do to make positive change happen in our country. Your support has deep meaning in the lives of literally thousands of people. It will affect the generations to come as well.
Tshikululu thanks you sincerely for that, and I should be grateful if you would view a short clip on what you have helped to make happen in 2010. Please click here to view this special message about your ongoing season of goodwill.
We wish you a restful last part of this year, and a 2011 full of joy and promise.
With warm regards
Tracey Henry
Chief Executive OfficerTshikululu office closure
Please note that Tshikululu’s offices will close on 22 December 2010 and will reopen on Monday 3 January 2011.
For information on our work, or to apply for project funding, please visit www.tshikululu.org.za.
For any urgent matters, kindly telephone Paul Pereira on 078 823 1025.
Anti-malaria drive saving lives: WHO
A “phenomenal expansion” in efforts to curtail malaria is saving hundreds of thousands of lives each year, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.
The disease still killed an estimated 781,000 people in 2009 — including about 650,000 children younger than five — but that figure has been reduced from 985,000 in 2000, the UN health agency said.
The distribution of millions of insecticide-treated mosquito nets and increased spraying against the insects is having a dramatic impact, according to the WHO’s World Malaria Report 2010 report.
Forty-two percent of African households now have a treated anti-mosquito net and 11 African nations have showed a greater than 50 percent reduction in confirmed malaria cases or malaria admissions and deaths over the past decade.
“The phenomenal expansion in access to malaria control interventions is translating directly into lives saved,” added Ray Chambers, the UN special envoy for malaria.
He predicted that a UN goal of ending malaria deaths by 2015 could be achieved.
International spending in the war on malaria is predicted to peak at 1.8 billion dollars in 2010, but WHO estimates that about six billion dollars a year is needed to wipe out the disease.
Read the full article at AFP and share your views in our Comments section below. More news headlines can be found in our News Archive.
Daily aspirin linked to steep drop in cancer risk
7 December 2010
Long-term use of a daily low-dose aspirin dramatically cuts the risk of dying from a wide array of cancers, a new investigation reveals.
Specifically, a British research team unearthed evidence that a low-dose aspirin (75 milligrams) taken daily for at least five years brings about a 10 percent to 60 percent drop in fatalities depending on the type of cancer.
“These findings provide the first proof in man that aspirin reduces deaths due to several common cancers,” the study team noted in a news release.
Pay-as-you-go healthcare launches in South Africa
3 December 2010
Pay-as-you-go healthcare is now available in South Africa but, while this could provide cost savings for the man on the street, some say the quality of private health services may suffer.
In November the Yarona Healthcare Network, a company that provides network management for medical aid schemes, launched Yarona Care, the world’s first prepaid healthcare product.
Unicef says HIV-free generation achievable
1 December 2010
A generation of babies could be born free of Aids if the international community stepped up efforts to provide universal access to HIV prevention, treatment and social protection, the United Nations said yesterday.
While children have benefited from substantial progress made in the fight against Aids, it said, more must be done to ensure all women and children get access to the medicines and health services designed to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission.
Aids is still one of the leading causes of death worldwide among women of reproductive age and a major cause of maternal death in countries with Aids pandemics. In sub-Saharan Africa, 9% of maternal deaths are attributable to HIV and Aids, Unicef said.
Momentum CSI recognised
30 November 2010
Tshikululu client Momentum has been adjudged the winning CSI programme in the PMR Africa Golden Arrow Ubuntu Awards 2010. The award recognises “œcompanies and institutions perceived to enhance stability, growth and economic development in South Africa through their CSR/CSI Programmes and initiatives”.
Momentum’s social investment initiatives are driven by the Momentum Fund (managed by Tshikululu Social Investments) and supported by the Momentum Volunteers Programme. The main focus areas of the Fund are people living with disabilities, vulnerable children, and a bursary programme that funds research in these sectors – translating into the Disability Programme, the Community Orphaned and Vulnerable Children (OVC) HIV/Aids Programme, and the Bursary Programme.
Tshikululu COO Francois Witbooi describes the award as “œa heartening recognition of the consistent work of the Momentum Fund in especially the disability sector, and also of the vitality of social investment solutions being applied in that area”.
" alt="Great capacity building is the stuff of the future" />Great capacity building is the stuff of the future
Capacity building should be undertaken deliberately and be communicated clearly through an organisation.
Written by Tracey Henry, CEO of Tshikululu Social Investments.
How do grantmakers try ensure that our civil society partners have the capacity to be sustainable, and should they even invest in such a search? It depends on how both donors and NGOs approach this work. Driven as a simple funding fashion, or imposed on developmental organisations top-down, it will be money wasted and will cost us opportunity. Taken seriously, in real partnership and with a long-term view of its need, it can be just the ticket to success.
I cannot help but notice that “œcapacity building” has become a common buzz word in the donor and development world. So it is that many organisations claim to be doing some kind of capacity building, often both internally and externally. Many grantmakers are asking questions about how they can leverage limited resources through such things as “œbuilding effective partnerships” and capacity building programmes.
" alt="South Africa: HIV positive" />South Africa: HIV positive
Even with all the money that has gone into finding a cure or at the least finding some surefire method of prevention, when it comes to HIV, we are essentially in the same place we were 10 years ago.
Written by Juliana Thornton, CSI practitioner at Tshikululu Social Investments and Joshua Murphy, who works with Medical Care Development International in KwaZulu-Natal.
There are an estimated 5.7 million people in this country living with Aids, more than any other country in the world. The most recent statistics of South Africa’s HIV/Aids epidemic from the annual HIV Antenatal Clinic Survey released this month is that our prevalence rate for pregnant women is “œstable” at 29.2%.
This means about 1 in 3 women walking into an antenatal clinic are HIV+, a condition which has major implications for their unborn children, if untreated. Prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission through delivery of antiretroviral drugs can reduce the risk of HIV transmission to below 2%. But there are major gaps in delivery of this effective intervention.
Best to focus on preventing HIV in Africa, says report
Efforts to treat everyone in Africa infected with the AIDS virus are virtually futile, and public health experts should instead focus on preventing new cases, a committee of experts reported yesterday.
Currently 22.5 million people in Africa have HIV, but this number will rise to more than 30 million by 2020 – far more than can be treated with current resources, according to the report from the U.S. Institute of Medicine.
At least 12 million of them will need treatment, but only seven million will likely get those drugs, the committee of international AIDS experts appointed by the Institute said.
The U.S. government, other governments and non-profit groups have spent billions to get drugs to patients in Africa and elsewhere and have negotiated deals to get companies to agree to license and make cheap generic versions of the drugs.
But it is not enough and spending is unlikely to grow much, the committee said. African nations need to share responsibility more, the report suggests.
Read the full article at Reuters and share your views in our Comments section below. More news headlines can be found in our News Archive.
