Juta MedicalBrief

The plan to force some South African scientists to register with a professional body could protect people and the environment, but the current version lacks clarity, notes an editorial in the journal Nature. Engineers, environmental-health officers and healthcare workers are occupations that can, in some instances, be practised only by people who have registered with a relevant professional body. This typically requires candidates to pass qualifying exams and adhere to a code of practice that includes sanctions for violations. The process is intended to create the highest standards of quality, ethics and safety. In most countries, scientists are not defined as a...

Documents from a case that was settled out of court, with a non-disclosure agreement, have revealed the toxic situation that developed at a practice at Medicross Randburg, where a doctor was thrown out amid claims of threatening to shoot his colleagues, sexual harassment and breaking a cupboard door, reports News24. Dr Alexandros Economakis challenged the move in the Gauteng High Court, alleging that fabricated misconduct claims by Dr M Elias and Associates Incorporated were aimed at getting him out. In his affidavit, Economakis, who was accused of being abusive and intimidating, said he was fired without a hearing, kicked out of...

The KwaZulu-Natal Department of Health says that despite global supply-chain pressures having a huge impact on local essential medication stock, and resulting in shortages, every effort was being made to deal with the challenges and maintain continuous treatment of patients, reports IOL. In July, there were supply issues with epilepsy medication (Phenobarbital), TB (Rifampicin) drugs, and contraceptive pills. In the same month, the Gauteng Department of Health squashed claims that Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital patients were being denied essential medicines due to shortages. While it acknowledged the challenges, the department said these were being managed through established clinical and supply...

With medical school places for South Africans notoriously being at a premium, an academic affiliation agreement clinched recently will create new pathways for local students wanting to study medicine, reports Moneyweb. The partnership was inked between St George’s University (SGU) School of Medicine in Grenada in the West Indies and leading KwaZulu-Natal private school Hilton College, in response to structural bottlenecks in this country’s public medical education framework. With only 10 medical schools operating nationally, domestic capacity remains severely constrained. The scale of the bottleneck is reflected in the high number of applications received by local institutions: • University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN): Around...

Despite the chronic shortage of emergency services vehicles countrywide, 41 ambulances bought by the City of Johannesburg – for a total of R16m – have been sitting idle for six years, because of red tape and bureaucracy, reports The Citizen. The vehicles were allegedly bought in 2019 independently without provincial involvement, and have never been deployed because the necessary approval to use them had never been given, according to the provincial government. It said it had absolutely no role in procuring or funding them. The DA said while the public faces long waits for emergency services, the vehicles have been standing...

A multi-departmental parliamentary meeting is expected to be held over the precautionary suspension last week of Dr Stan Moloabi, principal officer of the Government Employees Medical Scheme (GEMS), reports Sunday Tribune. Pinky Kekana, deputy minister of the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) has proposed a joint parliamentary session involving the Portfolio Committee on Public Service and Administration, the Portfolio Committee on Health and the Standing Committee on Finance, to discuss the issue. Moloabi has been in the public service unions’ crosshairs in the wake of a series of successive increases in GEMS contributions, including a 9.8% hike, later partially...

A warning has been issued to both staff and the public by the Gauteng Department of Health that anyone asking for money to help patients bypass scheduling processes will face strict action under anti-corruption legislation, according to a Soweto Urban report in The Citizen. It said bribery, corruption and queue-jumping at public healthcare facilities will not be tolerated, after complaints that some patients might be paying officials to bypass queues when scheduling appointments, accessing patient files and collecting medication from pharmacies. Department spokesperson Steve Mabona said patients must access services through established processes, and that “credible complaints” involving staff soliciting or...

The Department of Health says continually plummeting vaccination rates have contributed to the rise in measles infections countrywide, with 3 462 laboratory-confirmed cases recorded since January this year, reports IOL. Outbreaks have been reported in the Western Cape, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal and Northern Cape in children aged one to 14, and the department has called for urgent action to halt declining immunisation coverage and prevent outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases. Spokesperson Foster Mohale said the proportion of unvaccinated infants had increased from 12.1% in 2017 to an alarming 36.3% between January and April 2026. This effectively triples the number of completely unvaccinated children...

Three patients died in Novartis trials of its CD19-directed CAR T treatment after a dangerous immune system response, and a similar therapy from Bristol Myers Squibb has also been put on hold to review safety issues, the companies separately told Endpoints News. The treatment is known as rapcabtagene autoleucel, or rap-cel, and is being tested in immunology and neuroscience programmes. The three patients who died experienced what’s known as immune effector cell-associated haemophagocytic syndrome, a condition in which the immune system becomes overactive. A Novartis spokesperson told Endpoints that “resulting complications led to fatal outcomes”, and that Novartis is conducting a...

Complaints from several women researchers have prompted the Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition (AESAN) to review its recent report on diet and healthy habits during the menopause, after scientists questioned the fact that some of its recommendations on nutrients and women’s nutritional needs were based on studies carried out exclusively on men. Euronews reports that the controversy also highlights a long-standing problem in medical research: for decades, men have been over-represented in clinical trials and other scientific studies, while women have been excluded or under-represented. For the menopause report, the agency had asked its scientific committee to carry out...

The response to the Congo’s fast-spreading Ebola epidemic has been hampered by a severe lack of funding and pervasive misinformation, according to people on the front lines, with the outbreak on track to become the worse in history, reports The Washington Post. At least 5 700 people have been infected since the first case was identified on 15 May, of whom at least 2 700 have died. That means the outbreak is already bigger than the one that lasted from 2018 to 2022, which killed 2 200 people, and is spreading faster in its initial months than the West Africa...

In a case so rare it has not yet been contemplated by Queensland surrogacy laws, a woman gave birth to twin children with separate sets of biological parents last year, reports The Guardian. She had conceived an unplanned natural pregnancy at about the same time as she received an IVF embryo transfer under a surrogacy arrangement with another couple – both babies were born on the same day in November 2025 via Caesarean section. There has been no dispute about the children’s parentage, with both having been raised separately during the past 10 months by their respective biological parents. But the situation...

A former air stewardess for Air France has been victorious in her quest to have her breast cancer acknowledged as arising from her job, with a court ruling, for the first time, cosmic radiation as a contributing factor to the disease, reports the BBC. The landmark ruling found in favour of Sophie Lainault (59), a long-serving former flight attendant, who had sought to have her cancer recognised as an occupational disease linked to her work conditions. The court said cosmic radiation was one of three carcinogenic hazards arising from her profession. The other two were passive smoking and prolonged night work. Smoking...

Zanzibar’s Ministry of Health has held talks with the United States Embassy in Tanzania on the implementation of a health-sector co-operation agreement between Tanzania and the US, valued at around $3.1bn, reports allAfrica. Under discussion were how the planned investment and co-operation could align with Zanzibar government priorities and deliver tangible improvements in healthcare services. Permanent Secretary of the Zanzibar Ministry of Health, Dr Mngereza Mzee Miraji, said the meeting marked an important step towards developing a clear implementation plan for the agreement. Zanzibar would seek to link opportunities arising from the co-operation with significant investments already being made by the its...

The Gauteng Department of Health is appealing to South Africans to sign up as organ and tissue donors and to talk openly with their families about their wishes, as thousands of desperate patients await life-saving transplants, reports The Citizen. Spokesperson Steve Mabona said the department wanted to give hope to the 6 500 people on waiting lists countrywide, who were hoping for organ and tissue transplants. “In Gauteng alone, about 1 100 patients are either waiting for a kidney transplant or are being assessed for placement on the transplant waiting list,” he added, saying the heart, lungs, liver, kidneys and pancreas...

Two Frankfurt Airport workers have died of malaria after a rare outbreak led to six employees contracting the serious infection spread by mosquitoes, reports the BBC. The mosquitoes apparently arrived at Germany’s busiest airport on a plane, triggering an outbreak which was first detected in July, said health officials. Traps have been installed at the airport and mosquitoes captured will be analysed in a laboratory to determine their species and origin. The BBC understands that six male staff in different jobs and different areas of the airport were infected, and officials are analysing blood samples to determine if they were infected by...

US medical device-maker Boston Scientific said last week that a cybersecurity incident had disrupted global operations, including some information systems used to process and ship customer orders – joining numerous healthcare corporations, including Novo Nordisk, that have been targeted recently, reports Reuters. This latest attack was detected on 25 August and had activated incident-response procedures, working with third-party cybersecurity specialists, to investigate and contain the threat, said the company. The healthcare sector has been pummelled by the cyber criminals recently, with – apart from Novo Nordisk – device-makers Abbott Laboratories, Stryker and Medtronic, health insurer Clover Health, and drug-delivery equipment supplier West...

A Nashville hospital is in trouble with state regulators after a medication mix-up severely harmed four surgical patients and placed the facility in immediate jeopardy on three CMS (Centres for Medicare & Medicaid Services, a federal agency inside the Department of Health and Human Services) conditions of participation, a state survey found. Becker’s Clinical Leadership reports that the mistake has also reignited debate over the criminalisation of medical mistakes, with national pharmacy groups warning against prosecution. On 14 August, four patients at Ascension St Thomas Hospital Midtown, who were undergoing elective joint-replacement surgery, were injected in the spine with potassium phosphate...