December 9th, 2020A vaccine for COVID-19 has the potential to unlock society and save millions of people from death and serious disease, writes The Guardian. The unlikely hero of the hour is Big Pharma, an industry often regarded with disdain.
“Traditionally and...
December 2nd, 2020The denial evidenced by a mass failure to adhere to medical advice on COVID-19 is unique in modern history, notes an item in The Lancet. The time is ripe for psychoanalysis to discard “decades of insularity” and co-operate with experimental...
November 25th, 2020”I’m sorry, but the treatment’s not working.’ “These are the words that nobody wants to hear. Especially if you are the parent of a sick child. Yet increasingly, there is a real concern that we might have to start using them. In fact, some...
November 25th, 2020Coronaviruses closely related to the COVID-19 pandemic virus have been discovered in Japan and Cambodia, reports Nature. The viruses, both found in bats stored in laboratory freezers, are the first SARS-CoV-2 relatives to be found outside...
November 18th, 2020This week, more than 50 years ago, US President John F Kennedy died in Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, following severe bullet wounds to the head and neck, no palpable pulse, and agonal respiration Could Kennedy have survived if it happened...
November 11th, 2020A lame-duck presidency and political gridlock after a bitterly fought election are set to worsen the US’s coronavirus crisis just as the pandemic enters its deadliest phase, writes The Guardian.
With two months to go before a presidential...
November 11th, 2020The Life Esidimeni incident culminated in the death of 143 people under state psychiatric care. The only consequences for two Gauteng Health officials cited as playing a critical role has been written warnings, Acting Health MEC Jacob Mamabolo has...
November 4th, 2020The standard of healthcare in South Africa's public hospitals pre-1994 was better than what is currently experienced in the private sector today, Dr Kgosi Letlape, outgoing president of the Health Professions Council of SA, said in a Radio 702...
November 4th, 2020Prominent UK scientists, including the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford University, have challenged the death scenarios used by the UK government to justify a second national lockdown, reports The Daily Telegraph. The data used are...
October 28th, 2020Bosasa former chief operating officer Angelo Agrizzi, accused of corruption and bribery, spent a single night in jail before being transferred to a private hospital when he became ill and SA's biggest state hospital admitted it did not have...
October 28th, 2020The easing of South Africa's lockdown has triggered fears of a new wave of COVID-19 infections. Two separate surveys show growing pandemic fatigue, complacency and unnecessary risk of exposure to COVID-19.
Laura Rossouw, senior lecturer and...
October 28th, 2020In Gauteng the right of access to healthcare services has been sacrificed on the altar of politics and political factionalism within the ANC, writes Mark Heywood, the editor of Maverick Citizen. It’s gone on for too long and cost too many...
October 21st, 2020Professor David Nabarro, the world’s highest-ranking expert on COVID-19, has said that the World Health Organisation (WHO) does not advocate lockdowns, since their only consequence is to “make poor people an awful lot poorer.” It's a...
October 21st, 2020A second wave of infections has led to renewed interest in ending the COVID pandemic through a herd immunity approach, write 80 prominent scientists in a warning letter in The Lancet. The idea “a dangerous fallacy unsupported by scientific...
October 14th, 2020President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1955 admission to hospital heart attack was as dramatic for Americans as that of President Donald Trump for COVID-19, write Harvard's Dr Thomas Lee in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Lee, at Harvard Medical...
October 14th, 2020The Western Cape can be assumed to have near 60% immunity, which approaches herd immunity levels. That should also be true for the rest of South Africa, writes Emeritus Professor Jonny Myers, an occupational health and public health medicine...
