By PK Lee From where Esther Goba sat watching two football teams clad in “HIV-POSITIVE” T-shirts competing in a football tournament in Limbe, Malawi, she wouldn’t strike you as someone who is at the frontlines of the life-or-death match against HIV/Aids. But Esther, aged 53, is doubly affected: she has been living with HIV for […]
extratime
Extra-time! is a blog by international humanitarian medical organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) staff and field workers during the Fifa World Cup in SA from June 7 to July 14 2010. It's an alternate view on the World Cup and shares the positive chronicles to the Southern African region's struggle against HIV/Aids and tuberculosis. Information on HALF-TIME!, a soccer tournament, organised by the MSF, for people living with HIV, will also be featured. The tournament takes place in Johannesburg on July 2.
*DISCLAIMER
The opinions expressed in the Extra-Time! blog are those of the authors and the persons interviewed and cannot be considered or quoted as MSF's official position on the matters concerned.
AUTHORS OF THE BLOG
Baikong Mamid, communications officer, MSF South Africa
MSF press/communications officers in Southern Africa and worldwide
MSF field staff in Southern Africa and worldwide
Posted inGeneral
Bombers take the HALFTIME! title with a bang
By Maureen Mazibisa and Borrie La Grange How strange it would be if the players in a World Cup winning side were to meet just five days before the deciding match for the very first time to train together and then take the title with a convincing victory … But when Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) […]
Posted inNews/Politics, Sport
Survival tales from the Bulawayo pitch
By Joanne Sage The 2010 Fifa World Cup is in its final stage and the excitement in Southern Africa is still palpable even in Zimbabwe where I work as a nurse for Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on an HIV/Aids treatment project. An excitement that can’t be dampened despite the disappointment of […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Fancy footwork, teens and HIV
By Baikong Mamid It’s difficult going anywhere without getting caught up in the football fever these days. The World Cup is in the semi-final stage this week and I have to admit that the football bug has bitten me in a big way — even though I was never a football fan before. Now I […]
Posted inNews/Politics, Sport
A second chance at life
By Lungile Dlamini The Thwala family gathers around the small radio set to listen to the commentary of the 2010 Fifa World Cup tournament kick-off. The excitement in the little four-roomed house is so huge, neighbours walking past can almost feel it. Like millions of soccer lovers around the world, the Thwalas have been […]
Posted inSport
Extra Time presents HalfTime’s HIV Conquerors
There are six African teams in the World Cup in 2010 — and another six in the HalfTime five-a-side tournament planned for Friday July 2 in Johannesburg. Swaziland is one of the determined soccer teams of HalfTime. This small nation, South Africa’s nearest neighbour in the Southern African region, and facing an even higher Aida […]
Posted inGeneral
From the bench, onto the field
By Marcell Nimfuehr In January this year I travelled to Cameroon to make a health promotion film that featured Sylvestre, a patient who motivates others to seek treatment. Sylvestre is a softly spoken man in his 30s and at the hospital in Akonolinga town in east Cameroon he is the master of the television set […]
Posted inGeneral
The South African samba: Can you feel it?
The World Cup spirit is felt everywhere here in Khayelitsha! Since I arrived a year ago from Brazil to work for MSF in this impoverished township near Cape Town, I have never seen the patients so proud as today! They come to the clinic wearing their yellow and green Bafana Bafana jerseys, so excited about […]
Posted inNews/Politics, Sport
Score a goal against HIV
*Read MSF’s latest report: No time to quit: HIV/Aids treatment gap widening in Africa.
Posted inNews/Politics, Sport
Nobody calls it quits at half-time!
Truly speaking, the little I know about morality, I learnt it on football pitches. Albert Camus, French philosopher and Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature. In four days’ time the sound of a whistle and crisp thud of a boot on a football will herald a month when the world’s eyes are fixed on South Africa. […]