Talking Points
Insurance industry scrambles to respond to rise in medical malpractice claims
The growth in medical malpractice litigation has seen an array of new insurance products come onto the market, writes Stephen Coan for MedicalBrief. “An explosion” is how Health minister Aaron Motsoaledi has described the mushrooming number...NGOs want drug pricing transparency, slate govt over 'pharma friendly’ policies
Delegates from governments and civil society organisations, attending a global forum on fair pricing and access to medicines, have called for greater transparency around the cost of research and development as well as production of medicines, to...SA one of unhealthiest countries on earth because of primary healthcare failure
By some measures – healthy life expectancy, obesity and depression, among others – South Africa is the unhealthiest country on earth, writes Bob Mash, in the division of family medicine and primary care at Stellenbosch University in The...WHO criticised over not declaring public health emergency in DRC
The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo does not constitute a public health emergency of international concern. CNN reports that this is according to Robert Steffen, chair of the World Health Organisation (WHO) International Health...
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...
Fast and deadly spread of C.auris hits SA also
April 10th, 2019 A drug-resistant fungus called Candida auris, which preys on people with weakened immune systems, is quietly spreading across the globe, reports The New York Times. The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has added it to a list of germs...
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...R197m private healthcare inquiry has been a 'red herring’ — FMF
The government's private health market inquiry was a red herring intended to create a veneer of legitimacy for further regulation, in preparation of introducing its National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme and to divert attention from the dismal...Sugar industry shouldn't blame woes on sugar tax — Treasury
It is premature for the sugar industry to claim that the sugary drinks tax is causing job losses, according to the Treasury, writes Health-e News. The South African Canegrowers Association recently claimed that the tax has cost the industry R925m...
Zuma era corruption continues in provincial health
March 27th, 2019 Many of SA's provincial departments of health are still overrun with people appointed with little purpose other than to nod through corrupt deals. Spotlight reports that in as far as there has been a new dawn, it has been mostly at a national level....
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...
Top scientists clash over mooted CRISPR moratorium
March 27th, 2019 A group of ethicists and scientists – including some of the inventors of CRISPR – have called for a moratorium on all clinical uses of germline editing. But the leaders of the US National Academy of Sciences, the US National Academy of Medicine...
SA constitution ‘a basis’ for euthanasia — Human Rights Commission head
March 20th, 2019 Rights to dignity and ‘security in and control over their body’, both entrenched in the Bill of Rights, clearly provide a basis for the acceptance of euthanasia, and, at the very least, physician-administered euthanasia, write Tseliso...
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...
Pre-diabetes: A boon for pharma but is it good medicine?
March 20th, 2019 Labelling people as having pre-diabetes could do more harm than good, experts have said, as research reveals that even some of those involved in coining the term now reject it. The Guardian reports that the American Diabetes Association (ADA)...