Juta MedicalBrief

In a huge step forward for Aids prevention in Africa, a licensing agreement was recently inked between Aspen Pharmacare and Merck subsidiary MSD, granting Aspen rights to develop, manufacture and commercialise new anti-HIV drug MK-8527, or alimatravir, reports TimesLIVE. Also last week, the government announced a shortlist of three firms had been selected to make Gilead’s six-monthly HIV prevention shot lenacapavir (LEN). Alimatravir is a late-stage investigational, once-monthly, long-acting oral medicine from Merck, which has been at the forefront of research into the prevention of diseases including HIV, cancer and Ebola. Stavros Nicolaou, Aspen Pharmacare group’s senior executive responsible for strategic trade...

Acting Health DG Nicholas Crisp has issued notification to provincial departments explaining that private hospitals can still be registered, clarifying their confusion about how a Constitutional Court ruling should be understood. This comes after a completed brand new 65-bed hospital in Limpopo had to resort to legal action after being told by the local Health Department that a recent Constitutional Court ruling meant its final inspection could not be completed – and it could not go ahead and open, reports News24. The mix-up follows the recent victory by Solidarity in its landmark Constitutional Court case declaring sections of the National Health...

The number of people with HIV worldwide who are 50 or older is likely to almost double by 2040, skyrocketing from 11.5m to 20.2m, a new report from The Lancet, presented last week in Rio de Janeiro at the 26th International Aids Conference, warned. At that stage, said the authors, the numbers would represent more than half of all people with HIV, and pose new challenges for health systems unprepared for their specific needs, reports Business Day. More than 95% of these people will be in low- and middle-income countries. In South Africa, the number is projected to rise from 2.3m...

The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) has been authorised by President Cyril Ramaphosa to dig into a Gauteng Department of Health tender linked to the procurement of voluntary medical male circumcision services, reports IOL. “The investigation will focus on payments, and the process and compliance involved, and whether it complied with applicable Treasury regulations, and was competitive, transparent, equitable, and cost-effective,” the SIU said. The probe will also review any unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure linked to the tender, and allegations relating to the period between 1 August 2018 and 31 July 2026, “as well as any related conduct before or...

The “deluge” of unregistered weight loss medication is spiralling, with compounding versions of the drug continuing to sell like hot cakes in gyms, beauty salons and even in hairdressing salons, Pharmaceutical Task Group (PTG) chair Stavros Nicolaou told News24. He said that despite the recent high-profile legal battle that halted a pharmacy from compounding GLP-1 drugs at scale, the practice is still “mushrooming”. It’s estimated that around 230 000 South Africans are on the medication, he added, posing risks to their health and threatening to undermine general confidence in pharmaceutical companies. The issue is not limited to pharmacies, with retatrutide –...

Patient care has been compromised recently at Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital, despite the reassurances and denials from Gauteng Health, according to an insider, who warned that if the issues were not resolved, the hospital risked a broader medical collapse. The Citizen reports the source disputed the department’s version of events regarding recent shortages of dialysis consumables, in which the department’s spokesperson Steve Mabona had said dialysis services had continued without interruption despite supply challenges. Last week, Mabona said the hospital had experienced low levels of sodium bicarbonate solution three weeks earlier because of delays in the procurement process, but that contingency...

One of Africa’s biggest eye health challenges is avoidable blindness, a leading eye specialist told TimesLIVE, warning that although South Africa is making progress in producing ophthalmologists, there are still not enough to meet growing demand. Ophthalmologist Dr Mpopi Lenake added that the challenge is not only increasing the number of specialists but also ensuring they are supported, retained and distributed. She said avoidable blindness was a major problem on the continent, with cataracts, glaucoma, diabetic eye disease and uncorrected refractive errors continuing to affect millions of people. A recognised leader in her field, Lenake is former president of the South African...

A British patient on anti-psychotic drugs died in October 2025 from fatal clozapine toxicity after he suddenly stopped smoking, reports the BBC, with concerns now being raised about a lack of guidance on smoking in association with the medication. The 29-year-old had been taking the meds regularly but died when the levels of the drug in his blood became toxic – because he had given up smoking. Jack Burton from Worcester had been prescribed 525mg of clozapine for paranoid schizophrenia by his community psychiatrist, the correct dosage for when he was smoking. He had been regularly advised that stopping smoking would increase...

More than 3 000 cases of mpox have been recorded in Madagascar after the virus spread from a single port city to some of the country’s busiest coastal hubs, with experts fearing the true scale of the outbreak may already be larger than official figures suggest, reports The Telegraph. A total of 3 022 cases and 20 deaths had been recorded as of last week, with cases in Toamasina and Taolagnaro accounting for more than half of all diagnoses. The outbreak has been linked to Clade 1b mpox, a strain that emerged in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2024, prompting the...

Authorities in Uganda declared the country free of Ebola last week after the discharge of the country’s last patient in mid-June – as the virus continues to plague the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, reports The Associated Press. Since the outset, Uganda has maintained its cases were linked to the larger outbreak in eastern Congo’s remote province of Ituri, which borders Uganda. The first cases in Uganda were Congolese who crossed the border to seek treatment for an unknown illness before it was known they had Ebola, health authorities have said. After what health officials believe was weeks of transmission, the DRC announced its outbreak on 15...

Public hospital doctors in the Australian state of Victoria voted to begin industrial action after the government failed to meet their demands on issues that included long shifts, unpaid overtime, and shorter parental leave allowances than those of other public employees, reports Medscape. In a recent vote by members of the Australian Salaried Medical Officers’ Federation Victoria, 97% supported escalating their protests, claiming that the public hospital system is at a breaking point. “Clearly we don’t want to do things that are going to impact patient safety,” said Simon Judkins, MD, emergency physician and president of the Australian Medical Association (AMA)...

The thorny question of who should pay for foreign nationals’ healthcare has been raised again, this time at the opening by President Cyril Ramaphosa of Mpumalanga’s new 220-bed King Nyabela Hospital in Middelburg, reports EWN. The provincial government said the cost of treating foreign patients is placing additional pressure on an already stretched public health system, and has called for foreign governments to reimburse South Africa for the care their citizens receive at State facilities. Mpumalanga Premier Mandla Ndlovu said the ballooning costs of treating them should not be carried by South Africa alone, that they should “not be utilising our...

America has already recorded 2 295 measles cases this year, a number not seen since 1991, according to new data published on the Johns Hopkins University measles tracker, reports CIDRAP News. In 1991, the United States tracked 2 126 measles cases after recording 9 643 the previous year. A total of 2 289 confirmed cases were recorded in all of 2025, at least 700 of them associated with a large West Texas outbreak that killed two children. In October 2025, a massive measles outbreak began in South Carolina and continued until April this year. That outbreak involved 997 confirmed cases and...

The Nigeria Medical Association has warned that the shortage of healthcare professionals and personnel is a crisis, urging the local government in the state of Akwa Ibom, the wealthiest in the country, to establish at least seven medical training facilities in this region to address the growing workforce gap, reports Punch. The association’s chairman in Akwa Ibom, Professor Aniekan Peter, raised the concern last week at the Annual General Meeting and Scientific Conference in the state. He said local authorities had consistently failed to meet employment targets for medical workers, and that urgent measures were needed to bridge the shortfall. “If there...

Embattled Stellenbosch TV doctor and radiologist Pieter Henning was killed in a car crash in Potchefstroom last week, after his vehicle slammed into a streetlight and then several trees, reports News24. The police said Henning was declared dead at the scene, and that the cause of the accident had not yet been established.  They are investigating reports that his vehicle may have hit a pedestrian shortly before the crash, although spokesperson Sergeant Kelebogile Morake said investigators were still collecting CCTV footage and had not yet confirmed that version of events. Henning, one of the founders of Keystone Radiology – with branches...

Claims that broken and dysfunctional equipment at a hospital eye clinic was responsible for a patient being left blind in one eye have been denied by the Gauteng Department of Health, which says the allegations are “factually flawed”, reports TimesLIVE. The department said the clinic, at the Steve Biko Academic Hospital in Tshwane, could not be blamed, and that the accusations were not supported by the patient’s medical records. Earlier this week DA MPL Madeleine Hicklin said the patient had been left permanently blind in the right eye as a consequence of waiting six months for retinal surgery. “The delay was caused...

Although Tiger Brands had offered a settlement in May 2025 over the 2017 listeriosis scandal, and subsequent class action lawsuit, one of the complainants has confirmed to The Citizen a year later that no settlement had yet been reached. Tiger Brands has not responded to a request for comment, but lawyers pursuing justice for the victims, however, say they are making progress. In April, a court ruling had ordered government departments to co-operate with the legal representatives by releasing medical records and investigation reports related to the outbreak in which at least 180 people died after eating contaminated food traced to two Tiger Brands...

A leading New York medical school, Weill Cornell Medicine, has resolved a years-long federal criminal investigation into its handling of a former urologist’s sexual abuse of patients, and agreed to pay victims more than $1bn to settle civil claims – and to build a mega-million-dollar safety institute, reports Becker’s Hospital Review. The Justice Department said last week’s agreement requires Weill Cornell to commit an additional $30m to create an Institute for Safe Patient Care and Patient Empowerment aimed at spreading sexual-misconduct prevention practices to other providers. Under the voluntary compliance agreement with the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of...

A US judge has ordered a physician charged in the death of a woman during what prosecutors describe as a “heart protocol ceremony” to stop practising medicine while his criminal case moves forward, reports NBC. State attorneys had filed a manslaughter charge last week against Dr Samuel Lee in connection with the death of patient Tina Sodhi, who was given a cocktail of substances – as well as a parasitic cleanser – followed by a sauna, before she died. Lee, a medical doctor certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, describes himself as a “holistic, integrative psychiatrist who uses...