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Murder of Munshi: HPCSA calls on government not to 'criminalise medicine'
Anaesthetist Dr Abdulhay Munshi was shot dead in Johannesburg on Wednesday night (16 September) in what has been described by the Health Professions Council as...
Lockdown's terrible damage to South African healthcare
While 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...
Answers to 'long COVID' may lie in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome research
Between 35%- 70% of post-COVID-19 patients struggle to recover their usual health, writes MedicalBrief. Some answers may be found in data and biological material...
Expert estimates of SA's pandemic deaths plummet again
Expert 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...
BCG vaccine protects elderly against respiratory infections
The BCG vaccine, originally developed for tuberculosis, has been shown in a European double-blind randomised clinical study to cut respiratory infections among the elderly...
KZN High Court rejects 'payment in kind' for medical negligence
The High Court (Durban) has rejected a KZN Health bid to substitute future state healthcare services to a victim of hospital negligence, instead of...
Mass testing, high science, good behaviour = low COVID-19 deaths in Germany
In response to several COVID-19 'super-spreader' events in Germany in May-June this year, the government quickly locked down, first the hot-spots and then nation-wide, and...
Telemonitoring may cut heart attack, stroke by 50% — 5-year study
People enrolled in a pharmacist-led telemonitoring programme to control high blood pressure were about half as likely to have a heart attack or stroke...
WHO and national responses to COVID-19 have been 'fear driven’ — Prof Wood
The World Health Organisation (WHO) and most countries failed to take to heart crucial historical lessons of global influenza pandemics and botched timeous travel...
COVID-19: At the Frontline – The German Experience
Now engulfed in a second COVID-19 wave, the pandemic in Germany is ahead of Africa and the country has been praised for a low...
FDA commissioner 'overstated' benefits of convalescent plasma
US 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...
Depression not an excuse for employee misconduct – Labour Appeal Court
The Labour Appeal Court has overruled a judgment that found Legal Aid SA had unfairly discriminated against an employee with depression, writes MedicalBrief. The Labour...
The imperative for historical perspective over COVID-19
“Study the past, if you would divine the future,” Confucius said. In the fifth PPS Webinar, to be held next Tuesday 25 August, leading University of Cape Town medical...
WHO contradicted by US discovery of live virus in aerosols
A US study has found "unambiguous" evidence of live COVID-19 virus in aerosols, contracting the World Health Organisation's position statements transmission, writes MedicalBrief.
Sceptics of...
SA is over the COVID-19 hump; time for a new, provincial strategy — Prof Robin Wood
Data indicates that South Africa has passed the peak of the COVID-19 infections wave, says Professor Robin Wood of the University of Cape Town. Despite its limitations, pandemic modelling...
Cannabis legalisation a 'significant concern' – American Heart Association
Preliminary studies have found that cannabis use may be linked to an increased risk of heart attacks, atrial fibrillation and heart failure but no cardiovascular...
Ramaphosa scrambles to staunch anger over medical relief corruption
President Cyril Ramaphosa's administration is scrambling to deal with a wave of national outrage over evidence of billions of rands of corruption and looting...
SCA on negligence appeal: No such thing as diagnostic infallibility
Medical science has not advanced to the stage of diagnostic infallibility and sympathy is not grounds for imposing legal liability, wrote Judge Malcolm Wallis...
COVID-19 models – Fatally flawed?
In the fourth of the highly successful PPS Webinar series on COVID-19, Professor Robin Wood of the Institute of Infectious Diseases and Molecular Medicine...
Corruption feeding frenzy involving R2.2bn of pandemic relief funds
More 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...
COVID-19 transmission – The global misuse of data
Decisions on COVID-19 made by governments and the World Health Organization may literally be life-or-death and yet political leaders have made avoidable errors and misused ‘scientific data’, respected medical...
A new gold standard? Sputum testing provides higher rate of COVID-19 detection
Sputum testing detected the RNA of the virus that causes COVID-19 at significantly higher rates than oropharyngeal swab testing, the current gold standard, found...
ConCourt overturns conviction of jailed gynaecologist
Obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr Danie van der Walt, found guilty in 2017 of culpable homicide in connection with the death of a patient and...
COVID-19 transmission — An absence of data
Professor Robin Wood is conducting internationally ground-breaking research into infectious disease transmission at the Aerobiology and TB Research Unit, University of Cape Town, an...
Cautious optimism over Oxford-AstraZeneca candidate vaccine results
The candidate coronavirus vaccine AZD1222, being developed by University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, generated an immune response in a study of roughly 1,000 patients, according to interim results...
Coronavirus chaos: BBC goes inside SA's 'hospitals of horrors’
An exclusive, weeks-long investigation inside filthy hospitals in South Africa has exposed an extraordinary array of systemic failures showing exhausted doctors and nurses overwhelmed...
Fast and dangerous — The road to a COVID-19 vaccine
There is a great deal to worry about in the race for a COVID-19 vaccine, said leading medical scientist Professor Robin Wood. Challenges include...
Herd immunity assumptions challenged by latest research
There is a growing body of evidence that immunity to COVID-19 is short lived, writes MedicalBrief. The latest study, from the UK, found levels of...
UK safety review damns interventions that ruined women's lives
Britain'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...
Urgent need to mitigate surgical risk during pandemic
A large, 24-nation cohort study reporting post-operative outcomes in COVID-19 of post elective and emergency surgical patients found poor outcomes exceeding those seen in most...
Med scheme support sought for distressed private practitioners
COVID-19 has slashed patient numbers, leaving many private doctors in financial distress and worsening patient health outcomes, writes MedicalBrief. While private health offers to...
Coronavirus vaccine likely in 12 months — ARV drug co-inventor Larry Corey
Unlike HIV, the coronavirus is more open to the development of a vaccine and one should be within the grasp of modern science by...
COVID focus must stress prevention and good, early treatment
Professor Robin Wood, one of South Africa’s eminent medical scientists, says that while Western medicine tends to focus on the sickest patients, to make a...
Top American scientist in webinar on COVID-19 vaccine development
Best case scenarios for COVID-19 include the development of a vaccine. This week, medical professionals can tap into the knowledge of top United States...
Health officials in bitter new clash with medical professionals
The COVID-19 pandemic has shown stark divisions between medical professionals, on the one side, and bureaucrats and politicians on the other, writes MedicalBrief. Following...
Beware false negative PCR tests, warns Groote Schuur doctor
Clinicians should be wary of false negative COVID-19 PCR swab tests and rather rely on typical infection symptoms, backed by radiological scans. This warning...
Steroid treatment for sickest COVID-19 patients a 'major breakthrough'
Dexamethasone, a cheap and widely-used steroid, has become the first drug shown to save COVID-19 lives, in what University of Oxford scientists said is...
Leading virologist warns that C-19 vaccine not likely soon
Professor Peter Piot, Director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and one of the world's leading virologists, says the much-anticipated prospect...
Most-used COVID-19 test may miss 1 in 5 infections
The majority test for the novel coronavirus — a back of nose or throat swab using the RT-PCR laboratory procedure for genetic analysis —...
High Court scuppers Mkhize's plans for pre-emptive state quarantine
This week Health Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize again raised the possibility of compulsory state quarantine as a pre-emptive measure for those potentially at risk, in...