October 21st, 2020Airlines suffered a COVID-19 setback this week when an expert rejected safety conclusions they drew from his research, writes MedicalBrief. But while numerous studies suggest that SARS-CoV-2 can be transmitted during flights, there appears to be...
October 21st, 2020In multiple sub-Saharan countries more than half of women reported having lost at least one sibling before the age of 25, found a large study. Across all 43 studied lower-and-middle income countries internationally, roughly one third of the young...
September 30th, 2020All the most outspoken medical scientists serving on the South African government's Ministerial Advisory Committee (MAC) on COVID-19 who found themselves at public odds with government actions have been peremptorily axed in what Health Minister...
A large United Kingdom analysis covering a 10-year period found that regardless of multi-morbidities, engaging in a healthier lifestyle was associated with up to 6.3 years longer life for men and 7.6 years for women. Not currently smoking was...
September 16th, 2020While South Africa’s COVID-19 lockdown may have saved 16,000 lives by end December, its profound impairment of general healthcare meant slashed access to drugs and treatment and care for TB/HIV, disability, mental health, immunisation, and...
September 9th, 2020Expert estimates of South African COVID-19 mortality continue to plummet, with the Actuarial Society of SA (Assa) this week slashing by almost in half an earlier estimate of 48-88,000 deaths by end August, writes MedicalBrief. Mortality modelling...
August 26th, 2020US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn has apologised for overstating the life-saving benefits of treating COVID-19 patients with convalescent plasma. Earlier, in what was seen by some as succumbing to political pressure from...
Malaria resurgence in Papua New Guinea has been tied to apparent problems in the manufacture of long-lasting insecticidal nets.
Research shows that insecticide-treated mosquito nets, the mainstay in the global battle against malaria, are not...
August 5th, 2020President Cyril Ramaphosa's administration is scrambling to deal with a wave of national outrage over evidence of billions of rands of corruption and looting of COVID-19 emergency medical relief funds, writes MedicalBrief. With continuing...
July 29th, 2020More than R2.2bn of emergency COVID-19 funds have been stolen in a corruption feeding frenzy, the news embarrassingly emerging just as the International Monetary Fund has agreed to a further R70bn in relief, writes MedicalBrief. More than 90...
July 22nd, 2020Professor Robin Wood is conducting internationally ground-breaking research into infectious disease transmission at the Aerobiology and TB Research Unit, University of Cape Town, an area in which the global response to transmission has been confused...
July 15th, 2020An exclusive, weeks-long investigation inside filthy hospitals in South Africa has exposed an extraordinary array of systemic failures showing exhausted doctors and nurses overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients and a health service near collapse, writes...
July 8th, 2020Britain's Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review has published a two-year review of "harrowing" evidence three medical interventions: a pregnancy testing drug, an epilepsy drug, and pelvic mesh, writes MedicalBrief. The Review calls...
July 8th, 2020No health system can afford everything that may be demanded of it, making priority-setting arguably the most significant and challenging health policy issue, writes Prof Solomon Benatar of the universities of Cape Town and Toronto.
Professor...
No, South Africa’s alcohol ban wasn’t the only thing that helped lower hospital trauma admissions recently, but it did play a substantial role, write professors Richard Matzopoulos and Charles Parry of the South African Medical Research Council...Public Health
A research reviewed of all published studies that assessed the vitamin D status of healthy populations in Africa found that the average prevalence of vitamin D deficiency was much higher than expected.
Reagan Mogire, at the KEMRI Wellcome Trust...
