Juta MedicalBrief

One of South Africa’s top infectious disease experts has warned that it’s simply “a matter of time” before an Ebola case is imported to South Africa if the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is not contained, reports Business Day. “We have daily flights to the DRC. The fact that there haven’t yet been cases in South Africa is a reflection of the work being done to keep it contained, but it is spreading,” said Professor Salim Abdool Karim, director of the Centre for the Aids programme of Research in South Africa (Caprisa) and chair of a panel...

WhatsApp chats, voice notes and video clips presented before the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry on Monday revealed what appeared to be drug dealing between Medicare24 Holdings chief executive Michael van Wyk, attempted murder-accused tenderpreneur Vusimuzi ‘Cat’ Matlala, and a third party whose name is yet to be revealed, reports IOL. Matlala’s Tshwane Medicare24, which is embroiled in a controversial multi-million rand SAPS contract, is a franchise or subsidiary of Van Wyk’s Medicare24 Holdings. Medicare24 remains under the spotlight over its involvement in the cancelled R360m SAPS health risk management tender in Tshwane, which has become a key focus of investigators and already led...

South African pharmacy iDexis has been temporarily barred from distributing and marketing its compounded weight loss injectable pens, with the Gauteng High Court issuing a scathing ruling on Monday as Novo Nordisk won an interdict and costs against the pharmacy, reports News24. Pending ongoing regulatory reviews, iDexis, trading as Sentra in Pretoria, is now prohibited from making and selling its weight-loss products, which were also allegedly manufactured under unsafe conditions. Judge Petrus van Niekerk ordered the respondents, iDexis and pharmacist Ruaan Louw – the only director and shareholder of iDexis – to pay punitive costs, saying the company showed “callous disregard”...

Alleged Tembisa Hospital corruption kingpin Stefan Govindraju scooped a R25m payday in two and a half hours using a bunch of shell companies – thanks to crooked hospital officials, who all received kickbacks and bribes, including vehicles and properties, reports News24. Minutes of a Tembisa Hospital Quotation Adjudication Committee (QAC) meeting on 4 May 2021 show how 50 entities linked to Govindraju were approved for payment in just a single sitting. The committee assessed 60 transactions during the meeting, each at least 60 pages of documents, meaning the fast-moving hospital staff would have had to spend half a second reading each...

In a blow for the profession after a five-year battle, the South African Society of Physiotherapy (SASP) has lost its bid to scrap legal provisions permitting medical schemes to recover claims paid by mistake or as a result of fraud, reports Business Day. The Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) last week dismissed the society’s application to have section 59(3) of the Medical Schemes Act declared unconstitutional and invalid, ending a lengthy legal struggle in which the SASP challenges the Health Minister, the Council for Medical Schemes and all South African medical schemes (79 when the SASP launched its case in 2021,...

A plan by the Government Employees Medical Scheme (GEMS) for lower contributions – to accommodate union demands – is neither financially sound nor in members’ long-term interests, according to the Council for Medical Schemes, which says it is also unlikely to address the funding shortfall, reports Business Day. GEMS is being pushed by unions to slash its average contribution increases for 2026, originally pegged at 9.8% for January, then dropped to 9.5% in April, and now expected to be lowered even more to 7.5% from July, subject to approval from the CMS. CMS registrar Musa Gumede wrote to GEMS principal officer...

The Eastern Cape Department of Health has until Tuesday next week to comply with an order to pay the salaries of a group of workers, failing which Health MEC Ntandokazi Capa could face possible arrest, the Gqeberha Labour Court has warned. The Herald reports that last week, the court granted the department an extension to comply with a 5 June order to presented arguments on why Capa and her Head of Department, Dr Rolene Wagner, should not be arrested or fined. The department’s application was heard virtually on Friday. This followed the failure by both Capa and Wagner to comply with...

Two men who ran a thriving business selling fraudulent sick notes in KwaMashu, Durban, were arrested this week after a drug addict unwittingly tipped off police, reports IOL. The two, aged 36 and 39, who were nabbed at a shopping centre in the township, allegedly charged R100 for a one-day medical certificate and R150 for a medical note for three days of sick leave. The certificates reportedly carried the details of legitimate medical practitioners, although it remains unclear how the information was obtained. According to police, the men were known to conduct their business openly, including in passages within the busy centre. A...

The Western Cape has spent millions designing and building a specialised inpatient ward for teenage girls battling severe mental health issues, reports IOL. Lentegeur Hospital’s Child and Adolescent Female Unit, an eight-bed facility designed to accommodate girls aged from 13 to 18, cost the Health Department R10.7m and would, said Mireille Wenger, provincial Minister of Health & Wellness, create a nurturing, secure space, ensuring girls had access to dedicated care during their most challenging periods. “This unit represents our recognition that mental health is an essential part of health, that the well-being of children deserves particular attention,” she said. Girls needing psychiatric...

A Durban doctor has issued a warning about the dangers of energy drinks after the death of a 13-year-old pupil in KwaMashu last week. The grade 7 teenager had collapsed and died after drinking a 300ml bottle of Reboost energy drink – and had apparently consumed another energy drink earlier that day. Dr Nkosinathi Shabalala told IOL that energy drinks are not recommended for under-18s because of their high caffeine and sugar content and the potential health risks associated with them. He added that some of their caffeine levels were well above what was considered advisable for young people, and...

The DA has slammed Gauteng Health’s apparent disregard for the concerns recently highlighted by provincial forensic pathology labs. In a statement, the party said that the recent dispute over the evisceration or risk allowance paid to mortuary assistants should be a wake-up call for the department, and although the two-day Popcru strike did not cause a backlog in post-mortems, it exposed unresolved concerns about poor working conditions and the R750-per-month risk allowance for staff working in “hazardous and emotionally demanding environments”. Unless addressed urgently, the department risked losing skilled personnel and compromising critical forensic pathology services to Gauteng residents, warned MPL...

A first-of-its-kind therapy that can delay type 1 diabetes for up to three years will soon be available across the UK, after the approval by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) for the drug teplizumab, reports The Independent. Given as a one-off course, it trains the immune system to stop attacking pancreatic cells and has been described by the charity Diabetes UK as “marking the start of a new age of type 1 diabetes treatment”. Sanofi’s Teplizumab, also known as Tzield, is approved for children aged eight and over and for adults who have type 1 diabetes in its early...

A quick-thinking cyber security chief in Romania helped 100 national hospitals thwart efforts by hackers to completely infiltrate their systems but the attack, in February 2024, is still regarded as one of the worst to target healthcare systems around the world, reports the BBC. One after another the calls had come in from hospitals; criminals were infecting computer networks in a mass hack jeopardising countless lives. At Bucharest’s national cyber-security centre (DNSC) they watched helplessly as the hackers spread across Romania through a popular piece of medical software. Cyber-chief Dan Cimpean made a tough decision – the only option they had. The...

The American couple at the centre of an IVF mix-up will remain their six-month-old baby girl’s “permanent” parents after making a deal with her biological parents in a “mutually agreed custody agreement” with them last week, reports the New York Post. Tiffany Score and Steven Mills had sued the Fertility Centre of Orlando and its head reproductive endocrinologist, Dr Milton McNichol, in January for allegedly implanting the wrong embryo in April 2025 – which the hopeful mother-to-be only discovered after giving birth to “non-Caucasian” Shea on 11 December 2025. They have since confirmed the identities of the genetic parents of the...

Türkiye has become a global centre for liver transplantation, with the recent world-first eight-way cross-liver transplant sealing this reputation, said the country’s Health Minister last week. The fully synchronised operation involving eight living donors and eight recipients, reports Hurriyet Daily News. Minister Kemal Memisoglu congratulated Professor Sezai Yilmaz and his team at İnönü University Liver Transplant Institute in Malatya for the successful procedure, calling it a milestone in medical history. “A new world first has been achieved at our Inonu University Liver Transplant Institute,” he said. “Yilmaz and his estimable team have written their names in medical history with this transplant.” Around 1 800 liver...

A leading US podiatric surgeon who would often appear in the news for his charitable gestures – he also ran a non-profit that provided shoes to homeless people, military veterans and schoolchildren – is suing the state for $50m, alleging he was falsely accused of healthcare fraud, causing him to lose his livelihood and reputation years after charges against him were dropped, reports WXYZ News. Michigan’s Dr Anthony Weinert said he was still struggling to find work and clear his name, and was now working as a DoorDash driver (someone who delivers food as an independent contractor in their own...

The parents of a teenager in the United States were told she was likely to die – days after what should have been a simple mitral valve replacement was eventually followed by open heart surgery at another hospital where it was found the valve had been inserted the wrong way round, reports Daily Mail. Steven and Lori Stokes said their daughter (13) underwent a horrifying ordeal at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) in Portland after the valve replacement. They are now suing OHSU – and Dr Ashok Muralidaran, who performed the initial surgery – for $17m. Their lawsuit says that after initially being...

The global recall of a spinal implant – with recommendations from the manufacturers for patients to undergo urgent X-rays – may lead to thousands of people in the UK needing complex surgery to remove the device, which has now been linked to significant bone loss, reports The Independent. The M6-C artificial disc implant was designed to replace damaged neck discs, offering an alternative to spinal fusion surgery, involving metal rods. However, the implant has been associated with osteolysis – a progressive condition where bone tissue is destroyed and reabsorbed by the body. Device manufacturer Orthofix had announced it would discontinue the M6-C disc in...