Public Health
Opioid addiction crisis lawsuits target billionaire family and Purdue Pharma
April 28th, 2019 Five states have sued super-rich members of the family that controls Purdue Pharma. Together they are accused of encouraging an opioid addiction epidemic that has killed more than 200,000 Americans in two decades. Recently a coalition of more than...
Marijuana’s decriminalisation in America and South Africa – Implications
April 28th, 2019 Every year on 20 April marijuana advocates from Johannesburg to California celebrate cannabis culture, writes The Conversation. The publication ran a serious of articles on that date, ranging from a look at statistical evidence on the legalisation...
Doctors and nurses abandon Romania for better paid EU jobs
April 24th, 2019 Despite doubling salaries, Romania has lost 43,000 doctors and more than a fifth of its population since joining the European Union in 2007, reports The Guardian . Gabriela Dumitru was supposed to retire years ago, but instead, she’s...
May 8: Heavenly promises but the devil is in the details
April 10th, 2019 Health-e News unpacks the health care promises of the major parties in the run-up to May 8's general election. The ANC’s much-contested National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme has been a talking point for politicians in South Africa for close...
Venezuela health system in a state of 'utter collapse’ — Human Rights Watch
April 10th, 2019 The UN is being urged to declare a full-scale humanitarian emergency in Venezuela in the light of the “utter collapse” of its health system and widespread food shortages, reports The Daily Telegraph. A major report by Human Rights Watch and...
The health benefits of democracy — 170-country study
March 27th, 2019 Life expectancy improved more quickly in countries that switched to democracy over the past 50 years and there were fewer deaths from cardiovascular disease, diseases such as cancer and cirrhosis, and even road traffic accidents, a major study of...
SA's liberal abortion laws thwarted by social stigma
March 27th, 2019 The SA health service offers free, legal abortions. So why, asks Voice of America, are more than half of abortions in the country illegal, backstreet ones, causing as many as 25% of maternal deaths from septic miscarriages? Twenty-six-year-old...
Mind the gap: National disparities in age-related health problems
March 20th, 2019 The age-related health problems of a 76-year-old in Japan and a 46-year-olds in Papua New Guinea have the same level as an ‘average’ person aged 65, with Lesotho and theCentral African Republic performing worst in Africa at 53.6 years. Four of...
SA's sugar tax pits jobs against lifestyle diseases
March 20th, 2019 As part of the Health Department's strategy to reduce obesity, SA in 2018 became the first country in Africa to introduce a sugar tax. While Treasury conceded some jobs would be lost, the impact on sugar industry now claims of 10,000 imminent job...
C-sections carry much higher mortality risk in Africa
March 20th, 2019 The death rate among women undergoing a caesarean to deliver a baby is about 50 times higher in Africa than in most wealthy nations, Health24 reports that researchers have found. One in 200 women died during or soon after a C-section in a sampling...
The rights of foreign nationals in accessing SA healthcare
March 13th, 2019 Directives recently issued by the national Health Department and Gauteng Health requiring foreign nationals to pay in full for healthcare at public facilities weren’t only a threat to public health, they may have been downright illegal, reports...
Tough cannabis policies do not deter young people – Study
March 11th, 2019 There is no evidence that tough policies deter young people from using cannabis, writes Mattha Busby for The Guardian. Analysing data about cannabis use among more than 100,000 teenagers in 38 countries – including the UK, US, Russia, France,...
Smokers misunderstand risks of smokeless tobacco product snus
March 11th, 2019 American smokers mistakenly think that using snus – a moist snuff smokeless tobacco product popular in Scandinavia but newer to the United States – is as dangerous as smoking tobacco, according to a Rutgers University study published in the...
Studies underestimate effects of alcohol consumption on younger people
March 11th, 2019 Studies of the health effects of alcohol consumption may underestimate the risks of imbibing, particularly for younger people, according to a US study. This is because cohort studies generally do not encompass the full age spectrum of adults or...
Truth telling about tobacco and nicotine in an e-cigarette era
March 11th, 2019 Debate among public health professionals over approaches to tobacco and nicotine regulation has intensified with the rise of vaping. Researchers at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation explore the contours of the debate and the need to...