Search
  1. Home
  2. Southern Africa
  3. South Africa

Depression overwhelms AIDS caregivers

    JOHANNESBURG

    The South Africa Depression and Anxiety Group (SADAG) has found that 89 percent of home-based HIV/AIDS caregivers in the northern province of Limpopo and the eastern province of Mpumalanga suffer from depression.

    SADAG founder and spokeswoman Zane Wilson said her organisation would be holding a workshop on 21 June to help more than 300 caregivers in the two provinces cope with their work.

    "If our home-based care workers are themselves not coping with the stigma of AIDS and depression, then how can they be expected to help the patients they care for daily?" the government agency, BuaNews, quoted Wilson as saying.

    SADAG, founded in 1995, became the country's first NGO to examine the issue of AIDS-related depression among patients and caregivers in rural areas.

    This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

    Share this article

    Our ability to deliver compelling, field-based reporting on humanitarian crises rests on a few key principles: deep expertise, an unwavering commitment to amplifying affected voices, and a belief in the power of independent journalism to drive real change.

    We need your help to sustain and expand our work. Your donation will support our unique approach to journalism, helping fund everything from field-based investigations to the innovative storytelling that ensures marginalised voices are heard.

    Please consider joining our membership programme. Together, we can continue to make a meaningful impact on how the world responds to crises.

    Become a member of The New Humanitarian

    Support our journalism and become more involved in our community. Help us deliver informative, accessible, independent journalism that you can trust and provides accountability to the millions of people affected by crises worldwide.

    Join