Juta MedicalBrief

A chronic shortage of specialists in state facilities – and the mounting difficulties of matching private sector salaries – has led to Pietermaritzburg’s Grey’s Hospital battling to recruit permanent cardiologists and limiting the number of procedures done each week, reports The Witness. It has also led to a reliance on private cardiologists as global competition for these specialists increases. The shortage is particularly difficult for inland hospitals, where they are often harder to attract. The KwaZulu-Natal Department of Health said it had tried unsuccessfully to recruit specialists locally and internationally to fill the permanent posts at Grey’s. “We have undertaken extensive recruitment...

The Cape Town-based doctor of businessman Suliman Carrim has been subpoenaed to appear before the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry into alleged police capture. The commission has questioned the legitimacy of Carrim’s latest sick note after whistle-blowers reported seeing him at a Western Cape shopping centre while he was supposedly hospitalised, reports News24. Chief evidence leader Matthew Chaskalson said multiple independent sources placed Carrim at a mall for a lunch outing, prompting the commission to subpoena CCTV footage, hospital records and his doctor. The North West-based Carrim was due to resume his testimony about his business dealings with alleged Tembisa Hospital...

Research by a South African pharmaceutical company has identified a drug that prevents the Ebola virus from replicating, with a team now planning a clinical trial in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and South Sudan, reports TimesLIVE. This comes as the University of Oxford has launched the first human trial of a vaccine against Bundibugyo Ebola virus in efforts to help fight the outbreak spreading. More than 700 deaths have been recorded so far. Xylomed Pharmaceuticals hopes the double-blind, randomised clinical trial of its experimental therapeutic will determine whether the medicine is effective in treating the highly infectious virus, which...

An annual World Health Organisation (WHO) review has said cancer is expected to touch 92% of people around the globe – through either their own diagnosis or that of a relative – while inequities in access to prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care will continue to widen, reports The Guardian. The report warned that remarkable scientific progress in fighting the disease has changed very little for millions of patients who face devastating physical, emotional and financial consequences after diagnosis. Dr Andre Ilbawi, team lead for cancer control at the WHO, said: “For years, the story told about cancer has been about scientific...

The Departments of Health and Justice appear to be on opposing sides of the ring over a constitutional challenge seeking to legalise medically assisted dying, with the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) siding with Health and also saying it will oppose the application, reports News24. Advocacy group DignitySA brought the case in the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) in April, asking it to declare the common law ban on medically-assisted dying unconstitutional and to require Parliament to pass regulating legislation within 24 months. While Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi will oppose the case, Justice & Constitutional Development Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi has...

The Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (the Hawks) in KwaZulu-Natal is under fire after being accused of deliberately dragging its heels in a criminal case against a bogus doctor who defrauded the provincial Department of Health for more than a decade, reports Mail & Guardian. Rashal Dayanand apparently raked in an accumulated R637 087.75 from his salary and other allowances while employed by the department, at one stage even being appointed as an acting medical manager. A whistle-blower told the M&G that “thousands of lives were put in harm’s way … the case has dragged on for close to 10 years....

Doctors, pharmacists and others who are still prescribing or dispensing recalled iDexis semaglutide and tirzepatide products have been warned by regulators that they face disciplinary action, reports the Mail & Guardian. In a statement last week, the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA), the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) and the South African Pharmacy Council (SAPC) said that under the Medicines and Related Substances Act, “any professional found to be prescribing or dispensing the products to patients or users will knowingly be endangering the health of the public”. This comes after SAHPRA’s Class I, Type A recall of...

A motion to review access to healthcare for transgender and gender diverse members has been narrowly approved at the Discovery Health Medical Scheme (DHMS) AGM, receiving votes of 52% in favour of the motion, with 30.29% against it and 17.71% abstentions, reports Moneyweb. DHMS’ rules govern how written proposals should be submitted to the scheme as well as how these are considered by its board. All motions received by its principal officer were reviewed and one motion (this one) was put to this year’s meeting. According to the motion, at a minimum, this review should include – among other requirements – “adequacy,...

Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi has defended the limited rollout of the six-monthly injectable lenacapavir (LEN) – this as Gauteng Health last week announced that it had already exceeded its initial target, recording more than 6 100 provincial initiations in its first month of implementation, reports IOL. The rollout of the new anti-HIV treatment programme was launched by President Cyril Ramaphosa in Secunda last month, with Motsoaledi saying before the launch that the jab had been delivered to 99 of 360 facilities in high-burden districts across six provinces. On Thursday, the Gauteng Department of Health said that since the state of the...

Nursing staff at Rob Ferreira Hospital in Mbombela have to take kettles to work to ensure their patients have hot water for bathing, because there are no functioning geysers in the dirty and dilapidated 407-bed facility, reports News24. This was discovered at a recent oversight visit to one of the two tertiary hospitals in Mpumalanga by the SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) and the DA. The DA’s Ashleigh Trichardt said nurses described having had problems with the hot water supply “as far back as four years ago”, and had given up asking why. But the lack of hot water was not the...

A study from the University of the Western Cape suggesting that more than half of the province’s firefighters have reported respiratory problems has been disputed by authorities, who have said the findings have “been represented and need to be corrected”, reports News24. They said monitoring was constantly carried out and that the research had been skewed. According to Cape Town’s Mayoral Committee Member for safety and security, JP Smith, the city had since contacted the study team to correct their findings. He also pointed out that firefighters who took part in the study represented less than 15% of those in the...

A total of 29 babies died every single day in South African public hospitals in 2024 before they were one-month-old, according to figures from the latest District Health Barometer, meaning that altogether, 10 560 newborns died that year, write Linda Pretorius and Karen Harkema for the Bhekisisa Centre for Health Journalism. The statistic is one of 11 others being tracked as a measure of how well the public health system is doing when it comes to caring for pregnant women and young children, and with the number of women dying during pregnancy or birth. And although the rate of newborns dying in government hospitals is...

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved California-headquartered Vera Therapeutics’ drug to treat patients with a potentially life-threatening kidney disease, reports Reuters. The drug, Trutakna, is a self-administered injectable treatment approved for patients with immunoglobulin A nephropathy, also known as Berger’s disease, which causes abnormal protein build-up in the kidneys and could eventually lead to the organ's failure. Trutakna is the first and only drug that targets the immune-system proteins BAFF and APRIL, which are involved in the production of disease-causing antibodies in IgA ⁠nephropathy and other autoimmune disorders. Vera said that while the drug was launched immediately after its approval and...

America’s Vertex Pharmaceuticals has secured a label expansion through the FDA’s Commissioner’s National Priority Voucher (CNPV) programme that will now allow children as young as two-years-old to receive the costly gene therapy Casgevy for the one-time treatment of sickle cell disease (SCD) with recurrent vaso-occlusive crises (VOCs) or transfusion-dependent beta thalassemia (TDT). Fierce Pharma reports that the ground-breaking therapy, which was co-developed by CRISPR Therapeutics, had already been approved for patients 12 and older. The expansion opens the use of Casgevy to an additional 5 500 children in the United States, giving those patients and their families an opportunity to reduce...

A US woman who claimed vaccines were to blame for the death of her 18-month-old twins has been charged with their murder, and accused of suffocating them, reports The New York Times. On 1 May last year, the young mother had said she found her toddlers dead in their beds, cold and lying on their tummies. Three days later, she sat for an interview with Children’s Health Defence, the anti-vaccine non-profit group co-founded by Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, claiming that vaccines caused their deaths. The story was splashed on the group’s website as “breaking news” of “toddlers who were born together...

Internationally recognised prediabetes researcher and award-winning Professor Andile Khathi has been appointed as Deputy Dean for the Division of Medical Sciences in the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s School of Medicine, reports The Witness. Khathi (38) takes up the position after building a distinguished academic career marked by excellence in research, teaching and postgraduate supervision, and comes on the heels of his recognition as a recipient of the university’s 2025 Distinguished Teacher’s Award, honouring his transformative contribution to higher education. Khathi previously served as Academic Leader for Human Physiology and Anatomy from 2019 to 2026. Dean and Head of the School of Medicine in...

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the Surgeon-General has released an advisory on the harms of excessive screen use for children and adolescents (there is currently no confirmed US Surgeon-General), reports JAMA Network. The report raises awareness about the risks associated with screen use among children, like developmental and cognitive effects from early exposure and excessive use, and also highlights concerns about age-inappropriate content, substance-use promotion, online exploitation, and dangerous viral challenges. Screen use may lead to harm, the advisory warned, if it causes irritability when stopped, concealment of online behaviour, or failed attempts to reduce...

Five cases of poisoning from wild mushrooms have been recorded in Cape Town in the past two weeks, and although all victims have recovered, the provincial Health Department has warned against picking and eating the fungi, saying they may cause fatal poisoning, reports News24. Mushrooms thrive in the rainy season, and there has been an abundance of them in the region lately, said owner and head mycologist at Ichikolowa Mushrooms South Africa, Daniel Sherwood. He added that there was a growing interest in foraging as a result of a broader movement towards health, sustainability, and conscious living, but there was...

The previous dismissal of a negligence claim linked to childbirth has been overturned by a KwaZulu-Natal High Court (Pietermaritzburg) judge – after an appeal brought by the curator ad litem for a minor child, and in a case where inaction and shoddy management during labour resulted in the youngster’s severe medical handicaps almost two decades ago, reports The Post. Advocate Chamelle Jaipal, acting as the curator ad litem for the child, had brought the appeal after the mother’s death. The appeal was against the ruling handed down by a KwaZulu-Natal High Court (Durban) judge, with the respondent being the KwaZulu-Natal...

A doctor has been sentenced by a Berlin court to life behind bars on charges of murdering 15 of his patients who were under palliative care, and setting fire to their homes to try to conceal the crimes, reports ABC News. The 41-year-old doctor, who has only been identified as Johannes M in line with Germany’s privacy rules, went on trial nearly a year ago at a Berlin state court. Part of an end-of-life care team at a nursing service, he was initially suspected of the deaths of four patients. Prosecutors eventually accused him of the deaths of 15 people between...

Two executives from San Francisco-based telehealth provider Done Global have been sentenced to years in prison for a $90m pill-mill scheme involving amphetamine/dextroamphetamine salts (Adderall), reports KQED News. The Department of Justice said founder Ruthia He had used her company’s technology platform, compensation structure, and clinical protocols to unlawfully distribute more than 37m Adderall pills, defraud insurers of more than $12m, and obstruct the federal investigation that followed. She had spent more than $40m on social media advertisements to deceive Americans into believing they had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), falsely diagnosing patients with ADHD, and distributing the pills, including to...