The world has 18 months left to reach targets that all United Nations member countries signed up to in 2021 ..read more

CAB-LA virtually eliminates someone’s chances of contracting HIV, but costs about four times more than the government can afford to pay ..read more

Tilana Alida Louw said Dr Stephen Paul Grobler had verbally abused her, hurled profanities, insults, and used blasphemy, in front of other staff and patients ..read more

The Life Esidimeni inquest found this week that the death of 141 mental health patients in 2016 was caused by the negligence of former Gauteng health MEC Qedani Mahlangu and former Gauteng director of the mental health directorate, Makgabo Manamela.  In 2015 and 2016, more than 2 000 patients were moved to ill-equipped, unlicensed NGOs after the Gauteng health department terminated its contract with Life Esidimeni.  Handing down her ruling in the Pretoria high court on Wednesday, Judge Mmonoa Teffo said Mahlangu had terminated the contract between Life Esidimeni and the Gauteng depar ..read more

It was only as she tried to run away to save herself that a former colleague of Sisipho Grootboom* discovered she was stuck.  Her patient’s family, who’d rushed him in, intoxicated and with a knife wound, had locked the main entrance, fearing that the attackers would try to get to him again. But in doing so, they’d cut her off from the only other person on site — and the person who could help her most, the security guard.  It was 2022, and Grootboom, a professional nurse, worked at Ngcobo Community Health Centre in Masonwabe township, about 80km from Mthatha in the rural Eastern Cap ..read more

Health Minister Joe Phaala said on Wednesday that laboratory tests had confirmed five cases of mpox and the death of an adult male from Tembisa, Gauteng, of the same disease.  Two of the cases were in Gauteng and three in KwaZulu-Natal.  “One death is too many, especially from a preventable and manageable disease like mpox,” Phaala said at a media briefing in Pretoria.  All reported mpox cases were males aged between 30 and 39 years without any travel history to the countries currently experiencing an outbreak, according to the minister. This suggested local transmission.  ..read more

To get to Groote Schuur Hospital, one must at least travel some way on Cape Town’s Main Road, which runs between the two original enclaves of European settlement at the Cape — the Castle of Good Hope, built by the East India Company to defend its stake at the tip of the continent, and the naval base at Simon’s Town, which gave Britain’s Royal Navy supremacy in southern waters for a very long time.  The hospital complex, built on Cecil John Rhodes’s former estate, looms over the noisy road, its classical façade of Corinthian columns and Grecian urns amplified by Devil’s Peak. When I arriv ..read more

Three doctors have launched a digital solution to help bridge the gap between health literacy and better healthcare.  Safe Patient, a WhatsApp bot platform, provides the patient with step-by-step information about pre-surgery medical processes.  Pradeep Mistry, a consultant vascular surgeon, president of Vascular Society of Southern Africa (Vassa) and vice-president of the World Federation of Vascular Surgical Societies, has been working alongside two other doctors — Dirk le Roux and Jay Pillai — to develop the solution. Le Roux is a vascular surgeon and immediate past president of V ..read more

Parks Tau on Wednesday night dismissed criticism of the proposed R200 billion National Health Insurance (NHI) as “resistance” by private healthcare users, who he said were effectively subsidised by the state.  Tau made the comments while representing the ANC at a national election debate hosted by the Mail & Guardian and the University of Fort Hare in a week in which Health Minister Joe Phaahla confirmed, in a written parliamentary reply, that medical aid tax credits would be revoked to fund the NHI.  Tau, who is the deputy minister of cooperative governance and traditional affai ..read more

Sicelo Masangwana closes his office door in Somkele, a settlement of about 6 000 people near Mtubatuba in northern KwaZulu-Natal.  He walks the 10 or so steps towards the foyer of the building where a room full of people aged 20 await him, wipes across his forehead and takes a deep breath.  “It’s going to be a long day,” he smiles.  Outside, children are playing football barefoot in the dusty street that leads into the village from the tarred highway. Every now and again people pop in and out of their homes while doing their daily chores, as they usually do by mid-morning on we ..read more