Latest news with #KateRees
South Wales Argus
3 days ago
- Business
- South Wales Argus
How Food & Drink Skills Wales is shaping the industry
Sgiliau Bwyd a Diod Cymru, also known as Food & Drink Skills Wales, is funded by the Welsh Government and supports businesses across the country to invest in their workforce. The scheme provides targeted training in areas such as sustainability, innovation, leadership, and digital transformation. Kate Rees, programme manager for Food & Drink Skills Wales, said: "We've been encouraged by the enthusiasm from businesses across Wales who are embracing upskilling as a strategic priority. "Our mission is to support food and drink businesses—particularly in the processing and manufacturing sectors—by ensuring their employees have access to the right training and development. "We're not just building skills, we're building confidence, adaptability and a culture of continuous learning." One business seeing the results of investment in its workforce is Edwards, The Welsh Butcher, based in Conwy, which began as a small, local butchers but has grown into a national brand. Ieuan Edwards, master butcher and director, said: "There's huge potential in the Welsh food and drink industry, especially for people who are curious, adaptable, and eager to grow."
Mail & Guardian
04-08-2025
- Health
- Mail & Guardian
Most people on ARVs stay on them. Does our health system know that?
How can data help the health department make the most of the R622 million extra it received for South Africa's HIV treatment programme? (Flickr) More than two weeks ago, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi About This extra budget is just over a fifth of the roughly So, how to get the best bang for these limited bucks — especially with the health department wanting to get By getting really serious about giving people more than one way of getting their repeat prescriptions for antiretroviral (ARV) medicine (so-called differentiated service delivery), said Kate Rees, co-chair of the A big part of South Africa's problem in getting 95% of people who know they have HIV on ARVs (the second target of the UN's 95-95-95 set of cascading goals) is that people — sometimes repeatedly — For the UN goals to be reached, South Africa needs to have 95% of people diagnosed with HIV, on treatment. Right now, the health department says, But the way many health facilities are run makes the system too rigid to accommodate real-life stop and start behaviour, says Rees. This not only means that extra time and money are spent every time someone seemingly drops out of line and then comes back in, but also makes people unwilling to get back on board because the process is so inconvenient and unwelcoming, she says. Rees and Wilkinson were co-authors of a Journal of the International Aids Society in 2024, of which the results helped the health department 'We often have excellent guidelines in place, built on solid scientific evidence,' says Rees, 'but they're not necessarily implemented well on the ground.' To make sure we track the second 95 of the UN goals accurately, we need a health system that acknowledges people will come late to collect their treatment and sometimes miss appointments. This doesn't necessarily mean they've stopped their treatment; rather that how they take and collect their treatment changes over time. The standard ways in which the public health system works mostly doesn't provide the type of support these patients need, as the resources required to provide such support is not available,' explains Yogan Pillay, the health department's former deputy director general for HIV and now the head of HIV delivery at the Gates Foundation. 'But with AI-supported digital health solutions and the high penetration of mobile phones, such support can now — and should be — be provided at low cost and without the need to hire additional human resources.' We dive into the numbers to see what the study showed — and what they can teach us about making the system for HIV treatment more flexible. Does late = stopped? Not necessarily. Data from three health facilities in Johannesburg that the researchers tracked, showed that of the 2 342 people who came back to care after missing a clinic appointment for collection medication or a health check, 72% — almost three-quarters — showed up within 28 days of the planned date. In fact, most (65%) weren't more than two weeks late. Of those who showed up at their clinic more than four weeks after they were due, 13% made it within 90 days (12 weeks). Only one in 14 people in the study came back later than this, a period by which the health department would have recorded them as The data for the study was collected in the second half of 2022, and at the time 'But it's important to distinguish between showing up late and interrupting treatment,' notes Rees. Just because someone was late for their appointment doesn't necessarily mean they stopped taking their medication. Many people in the study said they either still had pills on hand or managed to get some, despite not showing up for their schedule collection. Sending back a parcel of uncollected medicine after just two weeks — as was the case at the time of the study — would therefore add an unnecessary admin load and cost into the system. ( Does late = unwell? Not always. In fact, seven out of 10 people who collected their next batch of medication four weeks or more late had no worrying signs, such as possible symptoms of tuberculosis, high blood pressure, weight loss or a Moreover, given the large number of people without worrying health signs in the group for whom data was available, it's possible that many of those in the group with incomplete data were well too. When the researchers looked at the patients' last viral load results on file (some more than 12 months ago at the time of returning to the clinic), 71% had fewer than 1 000 copies/mL in their blood. A viral count of <1 000 copies/mL tells a health worker that the medicine is keeping most of the virus from replicating. It is usually a sign of someone being diligent about taking their pills and managing their condition well. Yet clinic staff often assume that people who collect their medicine late are not good at taking their pills regularly, and so they get routed to extra counselling about staying on the programme. 'Most people don't need more adherence counselling; they need more convenience,' says Rees. Offering services that aren't necessary because of an inflexible process wastes resources, she explains — something a system under pressure can ill afford. Says Rees: 'With funding in crisis, we really have to prioritise [where money is spent].' Does late = indifferent? Rarely. Close to three-quarters of people who turned up four weeks or more after their scheduled medicine collection date said they had missed their appointment because of travelling, work commitments or family obligations. Only about a quarter of the sample missed their appointment because they forgot, misplaced their clinic card or for some other reason that would suggest they weren't managing their condition well. Part of making cost-effective decisions about how to use budgets best is to offer differentiated care', meaning that 'not every patient coming back after a missed appointment is treated the same way', says Rees. Health workers should look at how much the appointment date was missed as well as a patient's health status to decide what service they need, she explains. Giving people who've been managing their condition well enough medicine to last them six months at a time can go a long way, Wilkinson told Bhekisisa 's Health Beat team According to the health department South Africa will start rolling out six-month dispensing in August. 'But not everyone wants this,' explained Wilkinson, pointing out that experiences from other countries show that 50% to 60% of people choose six-monthly pick-ups. It speaks to tailoring service delivery to patients' needs, says Rees, rather than enforcing a one-size-fits-all system when more than one size is needed. Says Rees: 'Facing funding constraints, we really need tailored service delivery to keep the [HIV treatment] programme where it is.' This story was produced by the . Sign up for the .
Western Telegraph
22-05-2025
- Business
- Western Telegraph
Pembrokeshire school wins food product competition
Ysgol Bro Gwaun in Fishguard was named the winner of the Tasty Careers Schools Challenge for its creation of 'Mac & Caws', a macaroni pasta dish with a meat and vegetarian option. The competition, which has been running since 2018, challenges pupils to design food products and dishes that are healthy, sustainable, and commercially viable. It is organised by the National Skills Academy for Food & Drink (NSAFD) Wales in partnership with the Welsh Government-funded Sgiliau Bwyd a Diod Cymru / Food & Drink Skills Wales programme and Careers Wales. The finals took place on March 12 at Parc Y Scarlets in Llanelli, where teams of pupils pitched their final products, including a pudding designed to look like Welsh mountains, a super smoothie, and a 'Welshake' health drink. Ysgol Bro Gwaun's 'Mac & Caws' was judged to be the best. Louise Cairns, CEO for NSAFD/Tasty Careers, said: "Congratulations to Ysgol Bro Gwaun for their outstanding performance in this year's Tasty Careers Schools Challenge. "The judges were highly impressed with all the entrants but their creation really stood out for sustainability, commercial viability – and of course, taste. "We hope that participating in this competition will inspire some pupils to consider a career in Wales' outstanding food and drink sector." This year's competition required pupils to create a new food or drink product that is healthy, sustainable, and includes as much Welsh produce as possible. Tasty Careers 2025 attracted the highest number of entrants since it started, with more than 1,200 pupils from schools across Wales taking part. Kate Rees, Sgiliau Bwyd a Diod Cymru / Food & Drink Skills Wales programme manager, added: "It's been inspiring to witness the ingenuity of the students at the Tasty Careers Challenge. "They are undoubtedly our future foodies, and this initiative is a significant asset in cultivating talent for the industry. "The future of Welsh Food & Drink is in good hands." Aled Evans, a business engagement adviser at Careers Wales, said: "Tasty Careers is a fantastic event that encourages pupils to develop their creativity, team building and organisation skills, learn more about the food and drink sector in Wales and produce final products that they are proud of. "The challenge also broadens their aspirations and encourages them to think about their futures."
TimesLIVE
22-05-2025
- Health
- TimesLIVE
The case of the minister and the HIV activists: are we entering denialism 2.0?
But, explains Anova's Kate Rees, those numbers are incredibly misleading. 'The minister didn't subtract the number of people who were lost from care — those who stopped treatment or died — from the people with HIV who started or restarted treatment. If that was the number we were interested in, we would have reached our targets years ago,' says Rees. She says that's part of the reason South Africa's total number of people on ART has been lingering between 5.7-million and 5.9-million for the past two years. 'Because of people who fall off treatment, we're seeing static programme growth. So we're not seeing significant increases in the number of people on treatment overall. That means that though the 500,000 people they say they've now put onto treatment may have been added to the treatment group, another 500,000 who had already been on treatment could very well also have stopped their treatment during this time. In many cases, it's possibly the same people cycling in and out of treatment.' The health department's struggle, even with US government funding, to keep people on HIV treatment throughout their disease is also reflected in the second '95' of the country's 95-95-95 goals. With the aim to stop Aids as a public health threat by 2030, these UN targets require us to, by the end of this year, have diagnosed 95% of people with HIV, have put 95% of diagnosed people onto ART and to make sure those on treatment use their pills each day, so that they have too little virus in their bodies to infect others (scientists call this being 'virally suppressed'). Right now, the minister said at his press conference, South Africa is at 96-79-94, which means we're struggling to get people who know they've got HIV onto treatment, or to prevent people who are on treatment, from defaulting on drugs. Covid vs the funding crisis So how did South Africa get to a point where the health department and HIV scientists are yet again at loggerheads? Not so long ago, on March 5 2020, to be precise, shortly after South Africa's first SARS-CoV-2 infection had been confirmed, then health minister Zweli Mkhize put the epidemiologist Salim Abdool Karim live on national TV. The scientist's task was to explain to the nation what we knew about the unfamiliar new germ — the cause of Covid-19 — that was already causing havoc in the country. For two hours that evening, the nation sat glued to their TV screens to listen to science; an unthinkable scenario a few days before that. Abdool Karim could do something Mkhize couldn't: break down the cause of Covid, and where we were headed, in language everyone could understand. People were desperate for information and the government used experts — of which there were many — to keep South Africa up to date. The important thing was: Abdool Karim wasn't working for the government. He did chair the Covid ministerial committee, but, like the other scientists who served on it, he wasn't a government employee. He and others were merely people whose skills the health department was prepared to draw on; ironically, most of these were also HIV scientists, the same people who today feel they're being snubbed by government. 'We saw amazing leadership during Covid,' says Linda-Gail Bekker, an HIV scientist who leads the Desmond Tutu Health Foundation and was a co-chief investigator of the J&J Covid jab in South Africa. '[Because of the leadership] private funding followed. But we're not seeing it this time around. My concern is it doesn't feel like anyone [in the health department] is in charge.' It's not surprising Bekker feels this way. The deputy director-general position for HIV and TB has been vacant for five years, empty since Yogan Pillay, who now works for the Gates Foundation, left the position in May 2020. Health department spokesperson Foster Mohale says interviews for the position only started in the past few months. Why is information so hard to get? During the pandemic, there were daily press releases, vaccine dashboards and almost daily meetings with experts on the Covid ministerial committee. Now, other than the odd press conference, information that should be public, or opportunities for the government to respond to media or doctor's questions — is non-existent. We've seen that first hand at Bhekisisa. When we co-hosted a webinar on May 8 with the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society, we invited the current acting deputy director-general, Ramphelane Morewane, to answer clinicians' and journalists' questions. His office told us he was on leave in the days prior, but 'would definitely be there'. But Morewane didn't turn up, no-one was sent in his place, and no-one explained why the health department couldn't make it. As a journalist during Covid, I had the numbers of people like the deputy director-general in charge of vaccines on speed dial. This time around, I'm struggling to get mere copies of important government circulars, like the circular that instructed government clinics how to hand out ART for six months at a time, and who qualifies for it. The health department's February circular with incorrect guidelines:
Daily Maverick
15-05-2025
- Health
- Daily Maverick
South Africa's HIV treatment triumph faces new challenge — the rise of age-related illnesses
The success of South Africa's HIV treatment programme — the largest in the world — has also created a slumbering threat: a considerably larger group of people who need to be treated for age-related illnesses such as diabetes, heart conditions and high blood pressure — also called noncommunicable diseases — on top of having to receive HIV care. Because antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) keep people healthy and increase their life expectancy, the scale-up of treatment in South Africa — public sector treatment started in 2004 and in 2025 we've got about 6-million people on ARVs — means that most people with HIV and who take ARVs correctly now live just as long as those without the virus. Bhekisisa's data analysis shows the proportion of older people with HIV doubled over the past decade: people over 50 are now the second biggest HIV-positive group in South Africa today; 15 years ago, they were the smallest group. If this trend carries on, there could be three times as many HIV-positive people over 50 by 2030 as in 2015. As people age, their chances of developing health problems like high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes rise, which means that people with HIV might live long lives, but not necessarily healthy ones. With nearly two-thirds of all people with HIV living in sub-Saharan Africa, the continent will keep on bearing the brunt of the epidemic — despite massive gains in curbing new infections over the past 15 years — if health systems aren't geared to handle a growing number of people who have both HIV and a chronic illness like heart disease or diabetes. Experts raised the alarm about this 'inevitable price of success' more than a decade ago. Yet, write the authors of an editorial in a March issue of The Lancet Healthy Longevity, without thorough data on older people with HIV in African countries, putting plans for their healthcare in place will be hard — or may not be done at all. And with many countries' governments, including South Africa's, scrambling to find the money to replace the thousands of data capturers for HIV programmes previously funded by the US government after the abrupt halt in aid, funds for tracking health conditions of older people with HIV will probably be a low priority. In the wake of funding cuts, employing health workers to capture and manage health data would be a hard sell, said Kate Rees, a public health specialist with the Anova Health Institute, during a webinar hosted by Bhekisisa and the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society on Thursday — something that, for a public health issue that might be ignored because its fallout isn't immediately visible — could just make the problem so much worse. What then, does South Africa's picture look like, and could policymakers focus forward to stave off a calamity in the making? Here's what the numbers show. Doubled in a decade The proportion of people with HIV and who are 50 or older is growing — and faster than increases in other age groups. In 2015, the count in the 50+ age group was just over 700,000, which translates to about 12% of the total HIV-positive population. The age group 40-49 years, though, was about 1.3 million strong, which works out to 22% of the total. A decade later, the 50-plus total had jumped by 1.15 million to reach 1.85 million, and they now make up roughly 24% of the total number of HIV-positive South Africans. Although the 40-49 group's total also grew by 1.15 million, proportionally they now make up 32% of everyone. In other words, the proportion of older people with HIV doubled in a decade, but the proportion of people 10 years younger grew only 1.5 times bigger — a result, experts say, of people with HIV living longer, new infections still happening in older people and fewer new cases in the younger group. If this trend continues, there could be three times as many HIV-positive people over 50 by 2030 as in 2015. Speeding up, changing ranks People over 50 are the second biggest HIV-positive group in South Africa today. Fifteen years ago, they were the smallest group. Around 2012, the 50-plussers moved up one rank, surpassing growth in the under-20s group. But the number of HIV-positive people between 35 and 49 grew rapidly — so much so that by around 2012 they overtook the group aged 20-34 and assumed top rank. In the following years, the 50+ group increased too: people moved out of their late forties and new infections in that age group continued. By 2026 — about 10 years since their previous rank jump — people over 50 will already have been the second biggest group of the HIV-positive population for some time. The 35-49 years group will keep on growing in the next five years, modelled data shows, albeit more slowly than before. Because people are living longer, the older group will grow too as people move into their fifties, and because it's been expanding for some time already, the group will edge closer and closer to top rank over the coming years. Living long, but not necessarily healthy This is where the warning lies. Data from 2020 shows that, when Covid-19 is ignored, one in seven deaths in people between 45 and 64 years old were due to health problems like heart attacks, stroke and high blood pressure that year. In comparison, only one in 20 deaths in that age group were linked directly to HIV. Above age 65, a quarter of deaths were from these conditions. So few were linked to HIV in this age group that, proportionally, it was hardly a noticeable concern. So, as the peak of the HIV-infected population shifts into an older age band, more and more people will probably have to be treated for noncommunicable diseases like heart conditions, diabetes, obesity and high blood pressure — on top of receiving HIV care. In fact, in a large study in Mpumalanga, in which most people were in their late 40s to early 70s, about half had at least two age-related illnesses. For example, in this sample of just over 5,000 people, six in 10 had high blood pressure, with it being more likely the older someone was. About 10% of women had bad chest pain, called angina (which happens when the heart doesn't get enough oxygen-rich blood), and up to 11% of people had high cholesterol. High blood pressure combined with high cholesterol is bad for your heart. It can damage your arteries, and especially those that supply oxygen-rich blood to the heart. In turn, this ups the chances for fatty plaques building up along the walls of the blood vessels. This narrows and stiffens the arteries, meaning blood pressure builds up even more and the chance of a blood vessel rupturing increases. High blood pressure can lead to angina or a heart attack because the heart muscle gets too little oxygen, and also cause a suite of other health problems called metabolic syndrome, which includes conditions like diabetes, stroke and heart disease. Age-related health problems like heart disease, diabetes and being overweight are often linked to inflammation. This is a natural response of the immune system when tissues are damaged, like when we get older. However, inflammation is even more common with HIV-infection — because of the body's immune response, damage caused by the virus itself and also the effects of ARV treatment — and studies have shown that people with HIV who are older than 50 have double the chance of having conditions like diabetes or high blood pressure than what is seen in younger HIV-positive people. 'In future, every clinic nurse will have to be Nimart trained,' said Ndiviwe Mphothulo, the president of the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society at last week's webinar. Nimart nurses — short for Nurse-Initiated Management of Antiretroviral Treatment — are specially trained in how to prescribe ARVs and how to manage long-term patients. But, experts say, the flip side is also true if South Africa is to deal with the ageing HIV epidemic: every Nimart nurse will have to be equipped to deal with noncommunicable diseases in this population too. DM
