Juta MedicalBrief

The Council for Medical Schemes (CMS) appeals committee has instructed a medical scheme to fully fund a multimillion-rand treatment required by a 15-year-old suffering from a rare blood disorder – this after KeyHealth’s initial decision to provide only partial cover, reports Business Day. The dispute centres on KeyHealth’s stand to not fully cover the costs of AstraZeneca’s ravulizumab as a treatment for paroxysmal nocturnal haemoglobinuria – classed as a prescribed minimum benefit (PMB) – and imposing a series of conditions on the family’s membership. The child’s treatment with ravulizumab, branded Ultomiris, is expected to cost about R7.3m for the first year...

Medical aid members have been reminded not to miss their schemes’ deadlines to change benefit options for 2027, this as most of them announce increases that are almost double the recommendations from the Council for Medical Schemes (CMS), reports Business Tech. For some schemes, the cut-off date was this past Saturday (Bonitas, 31 October), and Hagop Jaghlassian, CEO of Curemed Health and Wealth Consultants, warned that members should not assume they have until the end of December to make changes, as each scheme sets its own administrative deadline, and missing this could leave members on their existing benefit option for...

Researchers who found alarming levels of child abuse in a six-year study at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital, have called for greater awareness from healthcare workers and others to improve early identification and referral pathways, writes MedicalBrief. The researchers noted that child abuse and neglect are global phenomena, and a significant problem in South Africa (SA). A separate Optimus study found that one in three children has been sexually abused. The incidence of physical abuse among children ranged from 8%-34.8%, while that of emotional abuse at some point in the life of a child ranged from 10.8%-26.1%. For the Chris Hani Baragwanath...

Western Cape Health & Wellness Minister Mireille Wenger has written to national Transport Minister Barbara Creecy over delays in the delivery of essential medicines, raising concerns about delays at Durban harbour and bottlenecks at South African ports that are further delaying medical supplies, reports Cape Argus. “This is about protecting the health, well-being and dignity of patients who depend on these medicines,” Wenger wrote. “Every unnecessary delay in getting medicines into the country is another delay in getting them to the patients who need them.” She said healthcare facilities were already experiencing significant medicine supply constraints and that avoidable delays could...

The death of an eight-year-old boy on Sunday in the Cape community of Manenberg has devastated the family, who were told that no ambulance was available to collect the child after he’d been injured by an exploding firecracker, reports the Cape Argus. The mother of Toheer Lewis said her son began vomiting and complaining of severe headaches after a firecracker allegedly exploded near his ear while he was playing in the street outside his home. Toheer's uncle said the boy ran to his mother immediately after the accident because his ear was bleeding. She reportedly applied ointment to the affected area,...

A chatbot helped a woman taper off a lifesaving drug and hide the plan from her doctors, leading directly to her death, according to her parents who have now filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, reports The New York Times. Qun Wan, in China, was in the middle of a heated call with his daughter, Bowen Wan – in America – when the phone suddenly went silent. The conversation, in early February, had started like most of their regular check-ins, a ritual that had kept them connected after Bowen (31) moved from their small village in China to the US. But the...

The Department of Health has spent R1.3bn on the NHI project in the 2025/26 financial year even while the implementation of the Act remains suspended pending legal challenges, reports Die Burger. These figures were analysed when officials addressed MPs in the NCOP’s Select Committee on Social Services. Health DG Thembisile Xulu said the NHI’s budget was R1.4bn, of which R1.3bn had already been spent: project management (R7m), affordable medicine (R43m) and R1.3bn for “financing of the project”.  The department’s total national budget for all goods, services and salaries nationally was R65bn. Xulu said it was important to implement the NHI in phases. When the...

The supply of ARVs to South Africans will not be affected by the recent High Court judgment whereby parts of the R15.5bn tender allocations were overturned and the Department of Health given 120 days to reallocate the awards, reports IOL. Cipla Medpro Manufacturing and Hetero Drugs had disputed the tender, and on 20 October, the court dismissed Hetero’s application, but granted an order in favour of Cipla. Hetero had asked the court to review and set aside the DoH's decision to exclude it from the Item 13 and Item 23 awards. Cipla was granted three awards worth R214m while Hetero received five...

Although the government has said it will set aside money to combat child stunting, and interventions to support pregnant women and their babies for their first 1 000 days of life, it is unclear how the R1.6bn – over three years – will be spent, reports GroundUp. This targeted nutritional support will be extended into pre-birth care nationally, though specific details are not yet available. Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana’s announcement of the funding injection during his Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) recently was welcomed by David Harrison, CEO of the DG Murray Trust, which advocates for a maternal support grant and...

Two young doctors died from Ebola last week in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), bringing the number of healthcare professionals reported to have died from the epidemic to three, reports The Eastleigh Voice. The two, Dr Marie-France Shogogo and Dr Samuel Safari, died on 27 and 29 October, respectively, in North Kivu and Ituri. The first doctor to succumb to the epidemic was Dr Charles Mbusa Munyumu, a neurosurgeon who died on 10 August at the Katwa Ebola Treatment Centre. Safari had practised for only two years, having studied in Goma, North Kivu, before moving to Ituri to practise at...

The age and disability discrimination lawsuit by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against Yale New Haven (Connecticut) Hospital over its cognitive and vision testing of physicians 70 and older, is heading for trial after a US federal judge denied duelling summary judgment motions, reports Becker’s. Both the commission and the hospital has asked the judge to rule in their favour immediately without a full trial: Yale wanted the case dismissed because it claims the tests are vital for patient safety, while the EEOC, which had sued in February 2020, wanted a quick win, saying the hospital’s Late Career Practitioner Policy...

Effort to loosen rules on unproven peptide drugs, favoured by US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, are facing resistance from the majority of Food & Drug Administration (FDA) scientists, reports The Guardian. Against the advice of the FDA, last week Kennedy said that several unapproved peptide injections promoted by online influencers will become widely available. Scientific staffers, who had limited input in drafting the document posted by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and which covers several injectable peptides promoted within the wellness industry for building muscle, healing injuries and boosting energy, said the policy could undermine the...

An analysis published this week in the journal Tobacco Control has revealed that an avalanche of bots had flooded a British Government consultation with thousands of responses in desperate efforts to influence the country’s ban on disposable vapes, reports The Independent. The Department of Health and Social Care said that more than 75% of the responses to the government’s Vapes and Tobacco Bill consultation in 2023 were generated by bots as part of a failed attempt to stop the legislation. It said it had identified 90 835 of the 118 756 responses as fraudulent and excluded them from the consultation...

Protesting community health workers (CHW) in the Western Cape have taken their fight for permanent jobs to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA), with the union asking it to determine who their actual employer is, reports GroundUp. The National Union of Public Service and Allied Workers (Nupsaw), which is leading the action, has said it wants “full absorption of all CHWs”. The workers, supported by the union, have been staging protests across Cape Town this month demanding permanent jobs. They are currently employed by non-profit organisations (NPOs) contracted by the Western Cape Department of Health and Wellness. The department told GroundUp that...

The Canadian government has introduced a new Bill allowing people to ask, in advance, to be euthanised at a later date if and when they have lost the mental capacity to make that decision, reports Reuters. Justice Minister Sean Fraser said the legislation will “ensure their wishes are respected if ⁠they are diagnosed with an incurable illness that could take away the ability to make this decision”. The government will work with provinces and territories on implementation, with “rigorous safeguards … and ensure the decision remains voluntary and free from external pressure”. People will have to be experiencing “intolerable suffering” ⁠at the...