April 21st, 2021South Africa's Auditor-General has warned that without urgent intervention, a number of provincial health services face collapse, writes MedicalBrief. Outstanding medico-legal claims amount to R105.8bn, with five health departments facing claims in...
April 21st, 2021While the recent Constitutional Court ruling that the courts may order alternative compensation to those injured as a result of medical negligence is sound in principle, legitimate concerns exist about the practical implementation. This is an...
April 21st, 2021Keeping the middle seats vacant during a flight could reduce passengersʼ exposure to airborne coronavirus by 23%- 57%, researchers reported in a study that modelled how aerosolised viral particles spread through a simulated airplane cabin, writes...
April 14th, 2021The Constitutional Court has ruled that South African courts will now be able to consider ordering alternative compensation – instead of a lump-sum payment – to those injured as a result of medical negligence. The possibility of providing...
April 14th, 2021A single injected administration of Regeneron's monoclonal antibody cocktail cuts the risk of developing COVID-19 by over 80%, reports MedicalBrief. Antibody drugs may give doctors a new way to protect high-risk people who havenʼt been inoculated...
April 7th, 2021The Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) has declared sections of the Births and Deaths Registration Act (BDRA) – which deems a foetus of less than 26 weeks to be "medical waste" to be incinerated – unconstitutional, reports MedicalBrief. Judge...
April 7th, 2021A widely promoted preprint, claiming that vitamin D led to an “80% reduction in need for ICU and a 60% reduction in deaths” has been removed by The Lancet. Meanwhile, in another Lancet journal, a systematic review to May 2020 found vitamin D...
March 31st, 2021More than a year after the coronavirus pandemic began, the World Health Organisation has released its report laying out how the virus spread to humans. But, reports The New York Times, it is already raising more questions than answers, including...
March 31st, 2021The reasoning behind the National Department of Health and the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Vaccines refusing to use the AstraZeneca vaccine locally are “muddled”, “misguided” and raise “deep ethical concerns”, write scientists from...
March 24th, 2021Although State-employed medical doctors have indemnity against legal claims, this is not an absolute protection, write two Medical Protection experts in MedicalBrief. As well as indemnity being forfeited in some situations, they are also not...
March 24th, 2021Although the endless, petty "tribalism and arguments" around diet are tiresome, a recent head-to-head study between low-carb and low-fat diets is worth serious discussion, says Dr Rohin Francis on his YouTube Medlife Crisis channel.
This is a...
March 24th, 2021A massive Danish study found only 80% natural protection from SARS-CoV-2 reinfection in general, declining to 47% in the elderly, reports MedicalBrief. A commentary in The Lancet says the “sobering” and “relatively alarming” study...
March 17th, 2021Until a month ago, the gold-standard guidelines on health sector mask usage were based on the belief that N95 masks should be reserved for those performing aerosol-generating procedures and that it was safe for other front-line workers to wear...
March 17th, 2021Despite the World Health Organisation and the European regulator backing continued use, inoculations using the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine have been suspended in numerous countries, in what the Italian medicine chief described as “a political...
March 10th, 2021Type 2 diabetes patients treated with the new drug Semaglutide achieved an average weight loss of nearly 10kg and a significant improvement in blood glucose control, according to the STEP 2 multi-centre trial. Last month, STEP 1 reported that more...
March 10th, 2021COVID-19 patients treated with the controversially repurposed drug Ivermectin in a randomised Colombian trial did no better than a placebo group, reports MedicalBrief. However, the study had several flaws and was not definitive, observers have...
