March 24th, 2021Brazil’s healthcare system has been plunged into the most severe crisis in its history, with doctors overwhelmed and patients dying while they wait for intensive care beds as the country’s COVID-sceptic president, Jair Bolsonaro, continues to...
February 3rd, 2021While the Cuban brigade doctors earn handsome salaries on the COVID-19 frontlines, there is a small group of doctors from the African continent who are battling the pandemic daily without pay - the so-called “supernumerary” registrars.
Daily...
January 27th, 2021Humans are designed to touch and be touched, which is why so many who live on their own have suffered during the pandemic, writes author Eleanor Morgan in The Guardian. Will we ever fully recover?
There’s only so much a dog can do. I live alone...
January 27th, 2021China’s coronavirus vaccines were supposed to deliver a geopolitical win that showcased the country’s scientific prowess and generosity. Instead, reports The New York Times, in some countries, they have set off a backlash. Officials in Brazil...
January 13th, 2021A viral video on social media that shows seriously ill patients lying unattended, while one patient — who later died — pleads for her breathing tube, has been slammed by the head of KwaZulu-Natal Health as “robbing patients of their...
December 16th, 2020An elegantly simple free phone application called Vula is revolutionising patient treatment and referrals between primary care facilities and tertiary hospitals in South Africa, providing timely, accurate and detailed information to help save more...
December 9th, 2020Jake Haendel spent months trapped in his body, silent and unmoving but fully conscious. Most people never emerge from ‘locked-in syndrome’ but Haendel did and his account, as told by Josh Wilbur in The Guardian, provides some fascinating...
December 2nd, 2020Last week, Gift of the Givers’ Dr Imtiaz Sooliman went to Nelson Mandela Bay's beleaguered doctors and nurses with an invitation, writes Estelle Ellis in Daily Maverick 168. “Give me your list. Tell me what you need. Add coffee. Add tea. Add...
In an article in the South African magazine Modern Medicine, KZN general practitioner Dr Shankara Chetty outlines his observations of the COVID-19 pandemic and the treatment protocols he used for 200 symptomatic patients of all ages – all of whom...
September 23rd, 2020In India, relentlessly rising case numbers are causing another emergency - serious mental health problems among COVID-19 patients, reports BBC News.
Many recovering coronavirus patients in India are experiencing mental health distress, said Dr...
September 2nd, 2020The situation in Zimbabwean health care was already so bad last year that there was a protracted national doctor's strike. COVID-19 has made matters far, far worse writes an anonymous doctor for African Arguments.
The doctor, anonymous for...
August 19th, 2020A Western Cape GP soon realised the limited potential of tele-consultations in a poor community, which meant gruelling days of face-to-face appointments and house calls in full protective gear.
While ever-changing guidelines and protocols,...
August 12th, 2020Despite talk by KwaZulu-Natal Health MEC, Nomagugu Simelane-Zulu about how superior public facilities in the province are to private hospitals, most COVID-19 patients are opting for private care, according to a Daily Maverick analysis.
Ideology...
July 1st, 2020"Emotionally drained" are the words two nurses, who work in Groote Schuur Hospital's C27 ICU COVID Ward, have used to describe how they feel. "I'm emotionally drained from yesterday and now I have to face today," Verna Collins and Judith Parenzee...
March 4th, 2020
Wang Xiuying, a self-proclaimed pessimist who’s trying to self-quarantine in Wuhan, describes in London Review of Books how misinformation and disinformation dominates lives in a China trying to deal with COVID-19.
He writes: The new...
February 12th, 2020
A team of medical scientists in Sierra Leon, part of the Predict international network, is in search of a holy grail to virus hunters: the next deadly pathogen that could sweep across the globe, writes The Telegraph.
Gradually, plumes of bats...
