Evaluation of the Tlhabologo Flagship Programme as a poverty alleviation strategy for unemployed women with children under five years

MA (Social Work), North-West University, Mahikeng CampusThis study evaluated the Tlhabologo Flagship programme as a poverty alleviation strategy for unemployed women with children under five years. The study was based on the rational that most programmes are never evaluated and therefore difficult to assess their impact on the beneficiaries. The programme was rolled out in 1997; it was now ten years down the line and befitting to assess its ten years of existence. Programme evaluation design was used to assess the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the programme. Owing to the study being qualitative, data was collected using focus group interviews, individual interviews, literature review and content analysis. The study revealed that the programme was ill conceived as it did not consult the affected communities with regard to its shape and size, as result of this the programme fa iled to meet its objectives of poverty alleviation. Based on the findings, the following recommendations were made: • That the programme be prioritized based on the needs, knowledge, interest and involvement of communities. • Appropriate budget be made available to fully develop the programme. • Skills development to be at the top scale and be conducted by appropriate experts. • Continuous mentoring to be encouraged. • Exit strategy to be put in place. • The programme had more limitations than strengths to make it a sustainable strategy. It was therefore concluded that although there were good efforts to alleviate poverty, programmes of this nature were not effective and sustainable as poverty alleviation strategy.Master

Understanding Drug Resistance of Wild-Type and L38HL Insertion Mutant of HIV-1 C Protease to Saquinavir

Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is one of the most challenging infectious diseases to treat on a global scale. Understanding the mechanisms underlying the development of drug resistance is necessary for novel therapeutics. HIV subtype C is known to harbor mutations at critical positions of HIV aspartic protease compared to HIV subtype B, which affects the binding affinity. Recently, a novel double-insertion mutation at codon 38 (L38HL) was characterized in HIV subtype C protease, whose effects on the interaction with protease inhibitors are hitherto unknown. In this study, the potential of L38HL double-insertion in HIV subtype C protease to induce a drug resistance phenotype towards the protease inhibitor, Saquinavir (SQV), was probed using various computational techniques, such as molecular dynamics simulations, binding free energy calculations, local conformational changes and principal component analysis. The results indicate that the L38HL mutation exhibits an increase in flexibility at the hinge and flap regions with a decrease in the binding affinity of SQV in comparison with wild-type HIV protease C. Further, we observed a wide opening at the binding site in the L38HL variant due to an alteration in flap dynamics, leading to a decrease in interactions with the binding site of the mutant protease. It is supported by an altered direction of motion of flap residues in the L38HL variant compared with the wild-type. These results provide deep insights into understanding the potential drug resistance phenotype in infected individuals