From the Frontlines
Snakebite: 'The world's biggest hidden health crisis'
June 5th, 2019 A crisis in the production of antivenoms is killing tens of thousands of people a year and, reports The Daily Telegraph, scientists are hoping to harness HIV technology to create a universal defence against snake bites. Snakebite is arguably the...
The hidden world of Cuba's 'white coat army'
May 22nd, 2019 Cuba's world-wide deployment of doctors is part of that nation's diplomatic strategy, as well as an annual $8bn economic lifeline. Some of the doctors, however, liken it to slave labour and being a political pawn. BBC News reports that for Dayli...
Rural doctors go the extra mile. Then swim a river
April 3rd, 2019 A Eastern Cape doctor blocked by protestors from reaching patients at a rural clinic hiked for kilometres with 25kg of medicine on his back and then swam across a river to reach them. The Times reports that Dr John Mitchell, 28, has been widely...
Fate of thousands unknown as rescuers struggle to reach Mozambique flood victims
March 27th, 2019 The fate of entire village populations in Mozambique remain unknown as rescue workers try desperately to reach thousands still trapped in rising floodwaters unleashed by Cyclone Idai, reports The Daily Telegraph. Eyewitnesses told of corpses...
Junior doctors lead the push to oust Sudan's dictator
February 20th, 2019 The greatest challenge yet to Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir is not from superpower muscle-flexing or armed rebels but from a popular revolt led by unarmed junior doctors, reports The Daily Telegraph. As the Arab Spring picked off the...
The high cost rare diseases: R54m for one-off injection
December 5th, 2018 The Sunday Times reports on one SA family's journey with their daughter, who has spinal muscular atrophy, trying to access hugely expensive new breakthrough drugs from Biogen and Novartis, for their daughter, who has spinal muscular atrophy...
Containing the Ebola epidemic in the face of armed conflict
November 14th, 2018 ‘I have been responding to different disease outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for 18 years, yet I have never seen anything as challenging as containing Ebola in an armed-conflict zone,’ writes Dr Eric Mukama of the aid...
Medical students experience 'considerably' higher rates of sexual harassment
October 31st, 2018 US medical students experience about double the sexual harassment faced by their peers in sciences and engineering, according to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine. A July 2018 report from the National Academies of Sciences,...
Giving the past a seat at the table: Saying 'no' to pointless treatment
October 17th, 2018 Medicine is not just about treating illnesses – it often involve understanding the necessity to say ‘no’ to further pointless treatment, writes Dr Lisa Caulley in the New England Journal of Medicine. The sheer speed with which...
Always make sure to get the name of the dog…
October 10th, 2018 It was 1 July, my first day of residency, and a queasy feeling lodged in my stomach as I donned my new white coat, writes Dr Taimur Safdur, at the Baylor University Medical Centre in Dallas in the New England Journal of Medicine. Safdur writes:...
Rwanda: Where a sore throat can become a death sentence
September 26th, 2018 In poor countries, like Rwanda, strep throat often goes undiagnosed and can lead to rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease, writes The New York Times. Since 2008, Team Heart has been annually flying in doctors to treat a fraction the...
SA psychiatrist's insomnia therapy hailed in the UK
September 19th, 2018 We are living through an epidemic of sleeplessness, but the medical establishment has largely ignored the problem, reports The Guardian. A radical new therapy developed by Hugh Selsick, a South African psychiatrist, has achieved remarkable...
Almost two decades later, 9/11 is still claiming victims
September 12th, 2018 Tens of thousands of people who lived or worked in the neighbourhood of New York's World Trade Centre after the 9/11 terror attack found themselves breathing in air thick with toxic fumes and particles. More than 43,000 have since been certified...
Medals returned to protest the treatment of immigrants in UK's NHS
August 29th, 2018 Around 20 aid workers honoured by the UK government for their work in West Africa during the 2014-15 outbreak of Ebola disease have returned their medals as a protest against the “hostile environment” of policies on migrants introduced in the...
Paramedic and doctor speak out over abuse of women in the line of duty
August 8th, 2018 As women marched against violence and femicide as part of the #NationalShutdown‚ a doctor and paramedic have spoken up about the appalling abuse they endure as women in the line of duty, reports The Times. Kim Williams‚ a paramedic with the...