Introduction:South African men are less likely to get tested for HIV than women and are more likely to commence antiretroviral treatment (ART) at later stages of disease, default on treatment, and to die from AIDS compared with women. The purpose of this study was to conduct formative research into the ideational and behavioral factors that enable or create obstacles to mens' uptake of HIV counseling and testing (HCT) and ART. The study consulted men with a goal of developing a communication campaign aimed at improving the uptake of HIV testing and ART initiation among men.Methods:Eleven focus groups and 9 in-depth interviews were conducted with 97 male participants in 6 priority districts in 4 South African provinces in rural, peri-urban, and urban localities.Results:Fears of compromised masculine pride and reputation, potential community rejection, and fear of loss of emotional control (“the stress of knowing”) dominated men's rationales for avoiding HIV testing and treatment initiation.Conclusions:A communication campaign was developed based on the findings. Creative treatments aimed at redefining a ‘strong’ man as someone who faces his fears and knows his HIV status. The resultant campaign concept was: “positive or negative—you are still the same person.”

The articles published in the South African Medical Journal between 1927 and 1975 were examined for the presence of psychological and psychiatric themes. Two hundred and seventy-seven articles and editorials were identified and analysed. The relative space allocated to issues psychological remained quite stable at low levels in the period under investigation. The following themes are discussed: psychopathology and treatment, psychoneuroses, psychology and physical disease, psychological testing, and psychology as an auxiliary to the medical profession.

Conscientious objection (CO) on the part of healthcare providers is a growing threat to safe abortion access. In South Africa, evidence suggests that this legal clause may be manipulated as a justification for public-sector healthcare providers to exempt themselves from their duties to provide essential reproductive health services as required by national laws and protocols. This qualitative study improves our understanding of the definitions, perspectives, and use of CO among providers, staff, and facility managers in South Africa, and CO’s effect on public-sector abortion availability. Using 18 focus group discussions and 23 in-depth interviews, we examined CO attitudes and behaviours of staff from health facilities that provide abortion care in Gauteng, Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal, and Eastern Cape Provinces. We find that CO is invoked for a variety of reasons, some unrelated to the legal basis for objection. There have been progressive shifts in attitudes towards abortion over time, but stigma against women and girls who seek abortion remains substantial among staff at facilities providing abortion. Providers who offer abortion services also report high levels of discrimination and isolation from colleagues. Such factors, combined with operational barriers to offering quality abortion care (such as lack of training support or financial incentives) and lack of clarity on CO definitions and procedures, may incentivise some providers to invoke CO inappropriately. Dissemination of national guidelines on CO should be prioritised to reduce ambiguity, and interventions addressing abortion stigma should be considered for all facility staff to safeguard abortion availability in South Africa.

Zimet's knowledge of AIDS scale was completed anonymously by 2,209 university students to assess whether a split-half approach in which items in each half were matched for content would provide better estimates of reliability than other method. Analysis indicates that the odd even Spearman Brown split-half reliability coefficient was lower than both the alpha coefficient and the content-based split-half coefficient. The Cronbach alpha was similar to the content-based Spearman-Brown reliability coefficient.