March 3rd, 2021The COVID-19 pandemic, and the race to make vaccines and other useful technologies more accessible to people around the world, has once again highlighted the tension between intellectual property (IP) rights and the promotion of public health, write...
February 24th, 2021The failure of South Africa's tobacco sales ban shows the "painful" limits to forcing social change, writes Stellenbosch University's Prof Willem Boshoff. The overwhelming majority of smokers didn't stop smoking but simply switched to illegal...
South African Breweries (SAB) has argued that the government’s assertion that its decision to ban the sale of alcohol was taken carefully is without merit. “It quite manifestly was not, in that the government had not commissioned any proper...Medico-Legal Analysis
Anti-vaxxing beliefs and vaccine hesitancy among a significant number of South Africans may hamper vaccination efforts in this country, writes Prof Pierre de Vos in Daily Maverick. Short of compulsory vaccination, there are less drastic measures...Medico-Legal Analysis
“International and national legal frameworks could enable the government to ensure generic COVID-19 vaccines are manufactured locally and in other developing countries, particularly in Africa.” So say Zane Dangor, special adviser to South...Medico-Legal Analysis
While morally appealing, calls for the suspension of intellectual property (IP) rights on COVID-19 vaccines would be a backward and misguided step, argue Mark Schultz and Philip Stevens on BusinessLIVE.
“The rapid development of COVID-19...
January 27th, 2021Any attempt by an employer to mandate vaccination against COVID-19 as a condition for ongoing employment, aside from the ethical aspects, entails considerable legal risk, writes Jason Whyte, director at Norton Rose Fulbright.
Whyte...
With the Control of Tobacco and Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems Bill (2018) on the horizon, health organisations and tobacco control lobbyists are failing to acknowledge the benefits of harm reduction products such as electronic vapour...Medico-Legal Analysis
Despite being a step in the right direction, the Cannabis for Private Purposes Bill “is not holistic in achieving the goal of public health and safety”. “If passed in its current format, it will have long-lasting effects on privacy and...Medico-Legal Analysis
Whether COVID-19 patients in need of extended care in an intensive care unit qualify for ‘emergency medical treatment’ is answered
by considering the South African Constitution, the meaning of emergency medical treatment, and whether such...
December 16th, 2020South Africa could be a global leader in the cannabis sector but the Cannabis for Private Purposes Bill is woefully lacking in proper research, write the University of Pretoria’s Maryke Steynvaart and Dr Marc Wegerif, with Rhodes University’s...
The problem of outrageous medical bills and the patient's liability to pay the balance on charges not covered by medical insurance, are covered in a Harvard Law blog.
Christopher Robertson, of the Rogers College of Law of The University of...
October 28th, 2020The British government had seized on the coronavirus to "exercise coercive powers over its citizens on a scale never previously attempted,”, said the country's former Chief Justice in a prestigious annual Cambridge University public...
October 21st, 2020As Health Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize’s proposed amendments to regulations on notifiable medical conditions came under fire in Parliament this week, some public health and medical law experts welcomed the proposed amendments to the regulations and...
Technically, South Africa does not currently register medical devices in the way it registers medicines. So, asks Catherine Tomlinson writing Spotlight, what does it actually mean when the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra)...
September 2nd, 2020There are very real dangers to allowing pharmaceutical companies legal immunity in order to fast-track a COVID-19 vaccine, writes The Independent.
Coronavirus made the fear of a global deadly pandemic very real for billions of people around the...
