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In the first of two programmes from South Africa, Claudia Hammond reports from Khayelitsha ouside Cape Town.

In April 2009, South Africans will be voting in presidential elections, and with more people here with HIV than anywhere else in the world – as well as the highest rates of TB - one of the big issues is healthcare.

The country was slow to respond to the HIV epidemic with the previous president denying that HIV causes AIDS and the health minister gaining the nickname 'Dr Beetroot' for her insistence that garlic, olive oil and even beetroot could cure HIV.

But now with a new health minister – Barbara Hogan - official attitudes are changing.

Proudly wearing a T shirt with an HIV positive slogan, she’s just visited the largest black township in Cape Town – Khayelitsha,

And for the next two weeks, Health Check too, reports from this shanty town that’s home to as many as one million people.