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Friday, 26 April, 2024

FOCUS: ETHICS

Children used as guinea pigs in UK's tainted blood scandal

Venilla Yoganathan - 0
The National Health Service in the UK is facing a major criminal and ethical scandal as the true scale of the number of medical trials using infected blood products on British children in the 1970s and 80s unravels amid an inquiry into the matter, notes MedicalBrief. Fresh details are emerging, showing how doctors placed research goals ahead of patients’ needs and treated many of them, including dozens with haemophilia, like lab rats, leaving many suffering the long-term effects of serious...
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NEWS UPDATE

SAMA issues apology for editorial

The South African Medical Association (SAMA) has issued an apology for an opinion piece published in the SA Medical Journal by former editor Dr Bridget Farham – who subsequently resigned – in which she referenced a submission by a doctor which she would not publish. SAMA’s statement said the views...

Concern as Health Department omits insulin pens from tender

Doctors have warned that some diabetes patients’ lives could be at risk because the National Department of Health failed to list life-saving premixed insulin pens on its tender awarded for insulin supply from May 2024 to April 2027. The Society for Endocrinology, Metabolism and Diabetes of South Africa (SEMDSA) said...

FDA heart pump recall after link to deaths and injuries

A pair of heart devices linked to hundreds of injuries and at least 14 deaths has received the FDA’s most serious recall, the agency announced this week, years after surgeons had first pointed out problems with the pumps. The HeartMate 3 is considered the safest mechanical heart pump of its kind,...

R2.4bn needed to fill 2 012 vacant posts – Phaahla

Health Minister Dr Joe Phaahla says there are 2 012 unfunded vacant posts of medical doctors countrywide – this does not include other categories like nurses, pharmacists, radiographers and dentists – and that the government will need R2.4bn to fill them. The Ministry would continue working with provincial Health MECs...

Suspended Tembisa Hospital boss dies

Ashley Mthunzi, the suspended former CEO of Tembisa Hospital, where almost 800 babies have died in three years and which is referred to by locals as the “Hospital of Death”, died on Tuesday after a short illness. Thunzi, who was in his 40s, was placed on precautionary suspension in August...

First combined heart pump and pig kidney transplant

The first transplant surgery to combine a mechanical heart pump as well as a gene-edited pig kidney has been performed on an American woman. Lisa Pisano (54) had heart failure and end-stage kidney disease requiring routine dialysis, but couldn’t have a standard heart or kidney transplant because of other chronic medical...

Aspen ready to help shrink global shortage of weight-loss drugs

Aspen, Africa’s largest pharmaceutical company, could potentially help ease a growing shortage of the world’s hot-selling obesity medications, said CEO Stephen Saad recently, even while it ramps up vaccine production and boosts production of anaesthetics. Aspen, which signed a deal last year to distribute and promote Eli Lilly’s blockbuster diabetes...

Daily dice with death for Bay EMS staff

Public and private EMS workers in Nelson Mandela Bay are increasingly being targeted by criminals, frequently held up, hijacked, robbed, shot at and pistol-whipped while trying to carry out their duties, and often, being prevented from attending to patients. Just getting to a patient in the region has become a...

Provincial Health Department corruption rife

Health Minister Joe Phaahla said provincial Health Departments have recorded 47 corruption cases since January 2023, involving every province except North West. Replying to parliamentary questions from DA MP Michéle Clarke, Phaahla said Limpopo, the Northern Cape and the Free State have disclosed the amount involved in their cases, while...

Doctor implicated in murder of ex-wife

A Gauteng doctor allegedly paid a hitman and his driver R35 000 to gun down his ex-wife – a high school teacher – a Vereeniging court heard last week. Dr Tumelo Ntholeng is accused of conspiring with his cousin, Pakiso Makhanya, who then recruited Mzwanele Mazeke and driver Jabulane Thabethe,...

New orthopaedic unit for Red Cross Children’s Hospital

A state-of-the-art new orthopaedic unit will benefit more than 1 400 clubfoot patients, conduct 1 000 surgeries annually, and provide care for more than 5 500 outpatients at the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital in Cape Town. At a sod-turning ceremony last Thursday, Zodidi Dano, spokesperson for the Children’s...

Toxic cough syrup now unavailable in Africa – WHO

The contaminated batch of Benylin paediatric syrup that recently triggered a product withdrawal on the continent is no longer available in African countries, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Monday. As reported in MedicalBrief, Nigeria this month recalled a batch of Benylin cough and allergy medicine after tests found...

WHO flags 'extraordinarily high' bird flu mortality rate in humans

The World Health Organisation says it is concerned about the spread of H5N1 bird flu, which has an “extraordinarily high” mortality rate in humans, and was a virus “just looking for new, novel hosts”. An outbreak that began in 2020 has led to the deaths or killing of tens of millions...

Popular pastor pushes malaria vax conspiracy theories

One of Africa’s best known evangelical preachers, Nigeria’s Chris Oyakhilome, is spreading the message, through sermons on his church’s YouTube channel, that malaria vaccines are ineffective and “there is no proof they have ever worked”. Everyone had been “lied to” about vaccination, he said in a February broadcast. The BBC reports...

PM to crack down on ‘sick note’ culture in UK

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will be cracking down on what he describes as a “sick note culture”, after pointing out that 94% of the 11m notes signed off by GPs last year denoted people as not fit to work. Sunak called the number of economically inactive young people in...

Eastern Cape nurse guilty of birth certificate fraud

An Eastern Cape nurse has been sentenced to either four years’ imprisonment or a R20 000 fine after registering the birth of fictitious twins so someone could claim child support from Sassa. The Directorate for Priority Crimes Investigation (the Hawks) said Gladys Ntlawuzana-Komboyi, who worked at Bambisana Hospital in Lusikisiki, had fraudulently...

Lights back on at Johannesburg hospitals after two-day outage

Electricity was restored to the Charlotte Maxeke Hospital on Tuesday, two days after a power failure at a CBD substation that provides power to numerous areas as well as several medical facilities. Staff at the hospital told News24 patient care had been hindered since the outage on Sunday morning, which was...

WHO prequalifies new oral cholera vaccine

The World Health Organisation has prequalified a new oral vaccine for cholera, the inactivated Euvichol-S having a similar efficacy to existing vaccines but being a simplified formulation, enabling faster, increased production capacity. Dr Rogerio Gaspar, director of the WHO Department for Regulation and Prequalification, said this was the third product...

Swedish legal gender-change age now 16

After six hours of deliberation, Sweden’s Parliament has passed a law lowering the minimum age to legally change gender from 18 to 16 and making it easier to get access to surgical interventions. The law passed with 234 votes in favour and 94 against in Sweden’s 349-seat Parliament. While the Nordic...

MEDICO-LEGAL

Nurses were negligent in care of elderly patient, appeal council finds

The South African Nursing Council Appeal Authority (SANCAA) has ruled that an inquiry failed to conduct a thorough investigation into ill-treatment of an elderly patient admitted to Capital Heart Endovascular Surgical Hospital in Durban. Tholsiemah Naidoo (86) was admitted on 3 July 2022 after a diagnosis of bronchitis pneumonia, but...

Paraplegic SANDF paramedic fights 15 years for payout

A former SA National Defence Force employee – who lost her unborn child and was paralysed after an accident in a military vehicle crash in 2009 – has sworn to continue what has so far been a fruitless 15-year campaign for compensation. Despite numerous attempts, Fikile Moeketsi (49) who was...

KZN Health probes man’s death outside clinic

An investigation has been launched by the KwaZulu-Natal Health Department after a man was found dead in a clinic parking lot on Monday. He had apparently died while waiting for help. Angry patients said he had arrived at the KwaMashu Community Health Centre at about 6am saying he needed help,...

US anaesthesiologist faces 190 years after IV bag-tampering deaths

A Dallas anaesthesiologist could be looking at 190 years behind bars after being convicted last week of injecting a nerve-blocking agent and other drugs into IV bags – causing the death of a co-worker and cardiac emergencies for several patients. A jury convicted Raynaldo Ortiz MD (60) of four counts...

Pfizer and Moderna go head-to-head over Covid jab patents

The latest leg of a global legal battle began in Britain on Tuesday when Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech asked the court to revoke rival Moderna’s patents over technology crucial to the development of vaccines for Covid-19. The pair had sued Moderna in September 2022 in efforts to revoke...

SOME RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS IN THE PAST WEEK

CARDIOLOGY

Call to re-assess growing burden of AF and its consequences

Heart failure, not stroke, is the most common complication of atrial fibrillation – which affects 37m people worldwide – say experts, calling for the profession to more comprehensively estimate the condition’s risk by considering multiple risk factors. Atrial fibrillation increases not just risk of heart failure and stroke but also...

GASTROENTEROLOGY

Diet change better at relieving IBS than medicine – Swedish trial

Adopting either a low FODMAP diet or one that was low in carbohydrates but still high in fibre relieved irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) symptoms more effectively than medication over a four-week trial, researchers have suggested. Two kinds of diet seem to work better than taking medication in addressing IBS, they...

GERONTOLOGY

Cheap diabetes drug may delay ageing, say US scientists

An inexpensive drug taken by millions of people to control diabetes may do more than lower blood sugar, with research suggesting it might have anti-inflammatory effects that could help protect against common age-related diseases including heart disease, cancer and cognitive decline. To test whether the medication metformin might help prevent...

ONCOLOGY

Drug breakthrough offers hope for deadly blood cancer – UK study

After a recent discovery, British scientists believe existing drugs could be repurposed to treat rare leukaemia and herald a “new era” for how an aggressive form of blood cancer is treated. Described as a “largely incurable disease”, acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) is a cancer that causes the bone marrow to...

Higher risk for second breast cancer in some women – US cohort study

A recent study suggests that younger breast cancer survivors with a germline pathogenic variant or those with an initial diagnosis of in situ vs invasive primary breast cancer have a significantly higher risk for a second primary breast cancer. Women diagnosed with breast cancer at 40 or younger are about...

The missing link between junk food diets and cancer

Scientists believe they have uncovered a missing link between how eating junk food increases the risk of cancer, after a study looked at the effect of methylglyoxal – a compound released when the body breaks down sugary and fatty foods – on a gene that helps fight off tumours. In a first, the...

NEUROLOGY

Call to reduce antipsychotic medicines for dementia patients

Doctors are being urged to reduce prescribing of antipsychotic drugs to dementia patients after the largest study of its kind found they were linked to more harmful side effects than previously thought. The powerful medications are widely prescribed for behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia like apathy, depression, aggression, anxiety,...

ABOUT US

MedicalBrief is Africa’s authoritative weekly digest of medical matters, both on the continent and around the world. It brings you a succinct summary of the latest developments, both in news and research, with links to the original material. Contact us: info@medicalbrief.co.za

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