Investigating the disjoint between education and health policy for infant feeding among teenage mothers in South Africa: a case for intersectoral work.

Background: Many low-and-middle-income countries, including South Africa, have high rates of teenage pregnancy. Following the World Health Organisation recommendations, South African health policy on infant feeding promotes exclusive breastfeeding until six months of age, with gradual weaning. At the same time, South Africa's education department, in the interest of learners, promotes adolescents' early return to school post-partum.

Adolescent girls' perceptions of breastfeeding in two low-income periurban communities in South Africa.

In South Africa, exclusive breastfeeding rates are low, and rates of teenage pregnancy are high. Educational policy enables mothers' return to school, which conflicts with policy emphasizing exclusive breastfeeding. We elicited adolescent women's perceptions and experiences of infant feeding choices, and conducted six focus groups ( = 57) in two periurban settlements.

Street use and design: daily rhythms on four streets that differ in rated walkability.

Few studies have correlated counts of street users to walkability features or tested for temporal variations in use across the day. Trained observers counted street users for four streets that differed in walkability according to the Irvine-Minnesota audit. From 7 am to 7 pm weekdays, across four 2-hour observation periods, all four streets had significant quadratic trends of increasing then decreasing use.

Conscientious objection and its impact on abortion service provision in South Africa: a qualitative study.

Background: Despite abortion being legally available in South Africa after a change in legislation in 1996, barriers to accessing safe abortion services continue to exist. These barriers include provider opposition to abortion often on the grounds of religious or moral beliefs including the unregulated practice of conscientious objection. Few studies have explored how providers in South Africa make sense of, or understand, conscientious objection in terms of refusing to provide abortion care services and the consequent impact on abortion access.

Taxi 'sugar daddies' and taxi queens: male taxi driver attitudes regarding transactional relationships in the Western Cape, South Africa.

Media reports are emerging on the phenomenon of young girls who travel with older mini-bus taxi drivers, and who are thought to have sex with the drivers in exchange for gifts and money. The extent to which such relationships might facilitate unsafe sexual practices and increased risks for both the men and the young women, often referred to as taxi queens, remains an important question in the light of the current challenges of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. However, very little research has been undertaken on this issue, especially regarding the perceptions and experiences of taxi drivers.