Juta MedicalBrief

Japan­ese pharma giant Astel­las and the Uni­versity of Cali­for­nia (UC) are heading to the Con­sti­tu­tional Court to try to block local pharma group Euro­lab and Dis-Chem from mak­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing Enzutix, a gen­eric of the expensive pro­state can­cer drug Xtandi, reports the Sunday Times. Euro­lab had obtained approval from the South African Health Products Reg­u­lat­ory Author­ity (SAHPRA) for the regis­tra­tion of Enzutix in January 2023. But when the University of California – whose sci­ent­ists had developed the drug – found out, it joined its com­mer­cial part­ner Astel­las in try­ing to get an under­tak­ing from Euro­lab not to pro­ceed for the...

Pharmaceutical manufacturers Viatris and Innovata have sought leave to appeal against last month’s High Court judgment setting aside their contracts to supply the state with the HIV treatment used by most of South Africa’s patients, Business Day reports. In a ruling handed down on 20 October, Acting Judge Graham Girdwood upheld an application brought by Cipla Medpro, and found Viatris and Innovata should have been disqualified from competing for the contracts to supply pills combining tenofovir, lamivudine and dolutegravir because their manufacturing licences had expired when the bid window closed. He scrapped their contracts for monthly and three-monthly packs of TLD,...

Africa’s biggest drug manufacturer, Aspen Pharmacare, has received regulatory approval for its generic injectable semaglutide in Brazil and South Africa, paving the way for commercial product launches within the next few months. Business Day says this positions Aspen among the first entrants in some of the key generic markets opening up after Danish drug maker Novo Nordisk’s patent on semaglutide shots expired in many countries earlier this year. Aspen was granted regulatory approval for its generic semaglutide jab in Canada in July and previously said it was seeking registration in about 20 more countries. Aspen’s generic semaglutide has been registered for treating...

A National Department of Health statement last week that current drug shortages are partly because of stringent compliance standards from South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) has been rejected by the regulator, reports The National. The department had blamed local pharmaceutical manufacturers’ failure to comply with SAHPRA requirements as being among the reasons for the shortages, but the authority yesterday said several other issues were to blame. Public hospitals and clinics are running short of critical medicines for conditions including hypertension, diabetes and severe mental illnesses, but SAHPRA communications manager Rodgers Baloyi said shortages could not be attributed to the regulator’s...

The US Food & Drug Administration has approved a generic version of lenacapavir (Yeztugo), the world’s only twice-a-year shot to prevent HIV – a big step toward making the drug available inexpensively and more quickly in 120 low- and middle-income countries, reports MedPage Today. The drug is expected to cost $40 a year per person in the countries where it will be available, the same price as daily preventive pills available now. “People don’t always take their daily dose of medication, and if you don’t take it, you cannot get protected against HIV,” said Carmen Pérez Casas, MSc, HIV lead for the grant-making...

Six people have been arrested countrywide after an HPCSA compliance raid – with five unregistered and one suspended practitioner being arrested, and those employing some as illegal locums also being in hot water. The Health Professions Council of South Africa’s Inspectorate Division said it has intensified nationwide compliance enforcement, and that the individuals were picked up between 27 October and 5 November in operations spanning the Western Cape, Limpopo, Gauteng and the Free State. In the Cape, officials had inspected the Trust Women Clinic after a complaint about unlawful abortion services: a Ugandan national running the facility admitted to being unregistered,...

Nearly seven years after it first emerged, a new strain of Covid-19 spreading around the world highlights the lingering and evolving threat posed by the virus, reports The National. While the new variant – PJ.2.1 – does not appear to be any more harmful than previous types, doctors said it is accounting for a greater proportion of cases, and remains a threat to vulnerable people. About 780m infections and 7m deaths linked to Covid-19 have been reported globally to date, although the number of new cases has declined significantly. Since being identified in May in North America, PJ.2.1 has achieved “rapid intercontinental spread”, according to...

The theft charge against suspended National Department of Health (NDoH) DG Dr Sandile Buthelezi has been withdrawn, but he will be back in court again in January because he is still being charged with allegedly defrauding the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria to the tune of R1m, reports News24. Last week Buthelezi and his co-accused, Health CFO Phineas Mamogale, acting deputy DG of corporate services Malixole Mahlathi, and service provider Nokuzsola Mafunda, appeared in the Specialised Commercial Crime Court, which heard that the first two had made representations on why the charges should be dropped. These were...

Police officers and hospital security had to forcibly remove a gang of nine men who refused to leave after barging into Potchefstroom Mediclinic last week, demanding procurement supply contracts and verbally abusing and then threatening staff, reports TimesLIVE. The North West High Court (Mahikeng) has now granted an urgent interdict barring four of the men from the premises. As they left, one of them had issued a serious threat to doctor relations manager Amanda Gomes: “You don’t stay here – we’ll find you in the streets.” Bullying The group had arrived uninvited at the hospital manager’s office early that morning – and demanded,...

Private hospitals and specialists are apparently refusing to treat vehicle crash victims under the Road Accident Fund’s (RAF) undertaking certificates because of the lengthy delays in getting their bills settled, reports The Citizen. The undertaking certificate is part of the compensation awarded to successful claimants, allowing them to receive medical treatment from specialists, with the healthcare providers submitting invoices to the RAF for payment. But delays in reimbursement have become so notorious that they are now wary of taking on the patients. Some patients pay out of their own pockets and submit their claims to the RAF, which is supposed to...

In a major innovative step, the Western Cape Department of Health and Wellness has launched a new digital 3D scanning and printing service for spinal braces at its Orthotic and Prosthetic Centre (OPC) for the public health sector, reports The Citizen. The innovation will make a significant different to patient quality of life for those afflicted with scoliosis, spinal injuries and other conditions, said Mireille Wenger, provincial health and wellness Minister. “These braces help to reduce pain, support recovery, and prevent further complications,” she added. The R5.5m investment will change patient’s lives, cutting waiting time from two weeks to two days, and...

An IT company in Gqeberha exposed thousands of telephone recordings, many dealing with confidential medical and financial matters, on the internet after accidentally misconfiguring a server, write Nathan Geffen and Joel Cedras for GroundUp. When you call a financial company and you’re on hold with a message saying “Your call is being recorded for quality and security purposes,” you rightly expect that the conversation you eventually have with the human on the other end is confidential and secure. On Wednesday night we discovered that Open V, an IT company, had left thousands of recordings of one of its customer’s telephone calls available to download...

Malfunctioning, broken equipment at government hospitals is nothing new, and after a recent such occasion, a cancer patient in Gqeberha had to resort to public crowdfunding to pay for a private scan, reports Daily Maverick. When the CT scanners at Livingstone Hospital stopped working, it placed patients in an uncertain, worrying situation, with no access to essential diagnostic services. One of them was Charmaine van den Berg (70), whose world was turned upside down after being diagnosed with breast cancer on 11 September. Her diagnosis was the beginning of a difficult journey through the Eastern Cape public healthcare system. When she returned to Livingstone...

A nurse in Scotland who objected to sharing a female hospital changing room with a transgender doctor has lost her employment tribunal case against her trade union, reports The Telegraph. Sandie Peggie was suspended by NHS Fife after complaining about sharing the women’s changing room with Dr Beth Upton, a biological male who identified as a woman, on Christmas Eve 2023. She took legal action against the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), accusing the union of failing to support her in her dispute with the health board. Peggie alleged the RCN had discriminated against her because of her gender-critical beliefs, saying the union thought she had “done something wrong” by...

A breach at a scandal-ridden NHS trust deliberately wiped out data involving hundreds of maternity cases at the UK's Nottingham University Hospitals – linked to the biggest review of maternity failings in NHS history, reports the BBC. An inquiry had revealed that more than 500 mothers and babies came to harm or died because of inadequate care at Queen’s Medical Centre and Nottingham City Hospital – both under Nottingham Trust. In the July 2024 data breach, according to an independent investigation on the heels of a police inquiry into the issue, the files were “methodically and selectively deleted”. Jack Hawkins, whose daughter Harriet was...

A pharmacy owner who repeatedly ignored her staff’s warning and who continued to illegally dispense highly addictive oxycodone pills to customers – many of them drug dealers themselves supplying their own buyers – has been sentenced to 90 months in prison. The US Department of Justice said Olushola Yusuf (60) had sold more than 300 000 oxycodone 30mg pills to nearly all of her customers, most of whom had no medical need for the drug. In total, she dispensed at least 335 351 of the pills, charging customers almost 10 times the typical cost of the drug and asking for payment...

The conviction and sentencing of a man who was involved in a scheme to steal expensive dialysis equipment has been welcomed by the Secunda Hawks, reports The Citizen. The arrest of the Mpumalanga man (38) came after he had attempted to persuade the manager of a Trichardt medical facility to help arrange the theft of the life-saving equipment – worth nearly R47 000. Thabiso Mokwana’s sentence was handed down in the Evander Regional Court last week, after the successful sting operation by the Hawks in Mpumalanga. He was sentenced to a R6 000 fine or two years’ imprisonment for corruption; 18 months’...

The Kenyan Government may extend the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination programme to boys as the country boosts efforts to prevent cervical cancer and other HPV-related diseases, and amid concern over low completion rates for the jab among girls, reports CapitalFM Africa. Medical Services Principal Secretary Ouma Oluga said vaccinating boys could become an important part of Kenya’s long-term disease prevention strategy, although the current programme remains focused on girls. He added that the latest Mini Demographic and Health Survey had found that only 20% of girls have received the recommended second dose: 59% had received at least one dose of the...

Concerned pharmacists in Kenya have issued a widespread warning after viral social media posts promoting the insertion of allergy tablets for vaginal tightening, reports the BBC. The potentially dangerous medical advice suggests that cetirizine, a commonly available oral antihistamine used to treat allergies, can help tighten the vagina, supposedly to enhance sexual pleasure. Although antihistamines can sometimes cause dryness as a side effect, experts say this does not strengthen vaginal muscles. “Dryness is not tightness... instead, it may increase friction, discomfort, and the risk of tissue injury,” the Pharmaceutical Society of Kenya (PSK) said. “Inserting oral tablets is unsafe. Cetirizine tablets are made...

In Namibia, more than 4 000 public facility patients had been referred to private facilities for Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) services over the past five years alone, spending more than N$80m in the process, reports Informanté. Now, marking a major milestone 36 years after independence, the government recently inaugurated its first MRI machine for public sector patients, which it expects will save about N$16m annually in private-sector medical referrals. The state-of-the-art facility at Windhoek Central Hospital was described by Health Minister Esperance Luvindao as “a pivotal, historic turning point for healthcare delivery in Namibia” and the first of its kind in...