HomeFrom the Frontlines
From the Frontlines
Anti-FGM movement gains ground in Sierra Leone, where 9/10 women are 'cut'
About 700 traditional ‘cutters’ in Sierra Leone have pledged to abandon and advocate against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) which is still not illegal in...
Australian wildfires spark worrying public health effects
Australia's devastating wildfires are causing serious public health effects, especially for those with underlying lung and heart conditions. Hospitals have also seen an increase...
Malawian albinos are being kidnapped and sacrificed
Nowhere is it more dangerous to be an albino than in Malawi, where they are captured by the albino-hunting gangs and either killed immediately...
Desperate times in Zimbabwe mean home childbirth services rampant
Zimbabwe's worsening health crisis is forcing desperate women to seek out traditional birth attendants, who often deliver babies using their bare hands with no...
Taxi drivers storm hospital over baby's body held in unpaid bills dispute
The storming of an Indonesian hospital to retrieve the body of a baby claimed to have been held hostage over an unpaid bill, has...
Shrines where the chained and padlocked mentally ill are 'cured'
The age-old practice of chaining the mentally ill to trees, to release them as "cured" after 40 days, persist in much of Afghanistan and...
Doctors' leader tells of Zimbabwe's 'silent genocide'
Zimbabwe's hospitals are the site of "a silent genocide", accepting all referrals but lacking most basics - gloves, bandages, even Paracetamol, writes Nomatter...
'Don't attack us!’ EMS staff plead
Eastern Cape ambulance drivers drove in convoy through Port Elizabeth townships last week, appealing to residents not to attack the people who serve the...
‘I gave up medicine to save my mental health’
Julia Patterson recalls clearly the moment she decided she had to quit two things she treasured – practising medicine and working in the UK's...
Gunshot admissions to Groote Schuur doubled in past 8 years
Massive levels of violence — the number of gunshot wound patients admitted to Groote Schuur has doubled in the eight years — coupled with abusive...
Hospitals of fear: Police and guards 'run away' during attacks on patients
Highlighting again the unsafe conditions in SA's public hospitals, police and security guards allegedly fled while a gunshot-wound patient was being violently assaulted. Separately,...
Attacks on doctors highlight security dangers in state hospitals
Free State University has resumed training at a Bloemfontein hospital, briefly suspended over security concerns following an incident where a doctor prevented a rape...
Snakebite: 'The world's biggest hidden health crisis'
A crisis in the production of antivenoms is killing tens of thousands of people a year and, reports The Daily Telegraph, scientists are hoping...
The hidden world of Cuba's 'white coat army'
Cuba's world-wide deployment of doctors is part of that nation's diplomatic strategy, as well as an annual $8bn economic lifeline. Some of the doctors,...
Rural doctors go the extra mile. Then swim a river
A Eastern Cape doctor blocked by protestors from reaching patients at a rural clinic hiked for kilometres with 25kg of medicine on his back and...
Fate of thousands unknown as rescuers struggle to reach Mozambique flood victims
The fate of entire village populations in Mozambique remain unknown as rescue workers try desperately to reach thousands still trapped in rising floodwaters unleashed...
Junior doctors lead the push to oust Sudan's dictator
The greatest challenge yet to Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir is not from superpower muscle-flexing or armed rebels but from a popular revolt led by...
The high cost rare diseases: R54m for one-off injection
The Sunday Times reports on one SA family's journey with their daughter, who has spinal muscular atrophy, trying to access hugely expensive new breakthrough...
Containing the Ebola epidemic in the face of armed conflict
‘I have been responding to different disease outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for 18 years, yet I have never seen anything...
Medical students experience 'considerably' higher rates of sexual harassment
US medical students experience about double the sexual harassment faced by their peers in sciences and engineering, according to an article in the New England...
Giving the past a seat at the table: Saying 'no' to pointless treatment
Medicine is not just about treating illnesses – it often involve understanding the necessity to say ‘no’ to further pointless treatment, writes Dr Lisa...
Always make sure to get the name of the dog…
It was 1 July, my first day of residency, and a queasy feeling lodged in my stomach as I donned my new white coat,...
Rwanda: Where a sore throat can become a death sentence
In poor countries, like Rwanda, strep throat often goes undiagnosed and can lead to rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease, writes The New York Times. Since...
SA psychiatrist's insomnia therapy hailed in the UK
We are living through an epidemic of sleeplessness, but the medical establishment has largely ignored the problem, reports The Guardian. A radical new therapy...
Almost two decades later, 9/11 is still claiming victims
Tens of thousands of people who lived or worked in the neighbourhood of New York's World Trade Centre after the 9/11 terror attack found themselves...
Medals returned to protest the treatment of immigrants in UK's NHS
Around 20 aid workers honoured by the UK government for their work in West Africa during the 2014-15 outbreak of Ebola disease have returned...
Paramedic and doctor speak out over abuse of women in the line of duty
As women marched against violence and femicide as part of the #NationalShutdown‚ a doctor and paramedic have spoken up about the appalling abuse they...
Groote Schuur Trauma Centre: 'Overloaded with violence'
Weekends are the busiest times at the Groote Schuur Trauma Centre in Cape Town. In the early hours of the morning doctors, nurses and...
The unique role of doctors in evaluating torture and persecution
With applications for asylum in the US increasing sharply, a paper from a team of asylum medicine and law experts highlights the important role...
World's highest ER now brings affordable medicine to the Sherpas
Countless foreign climbers who have run into trouble on Mount Everest’s unforgiving slopes have been saved by the local ER services. Now these medics...
One psychiatrist's battle against institutionalised wrongdoing
Dr Kiran Sukeri, formerly employed at the Tower Psychiatric Hospital in the Eastern Cape, has been smeared and harrassed for blowing the whistle on...
When the time comes for a doctor to move on…
The health care system is not kind to the chronically ill and marginally insured, and it is not particularly kind to their doctors, either,...
Mahikeng doctor defies strike violence to deliver babies
A Mahikeng doctor defied burning tyres and barricaded roads to deliver eight babies, four by Caesarean, when violent strike action virtually closed down the...
Mass shootings point to a greater role for the public in dealing with casualties
What the recent Las Vegas shooting showed, trauma experts said, is that nascent efforts to teach and encourage the public to help the wounded...
More well-trained midwives could alleviate SA obstetric crisis
With the crisis in obstetrics in South Africa there is no doubt that there should and now will be more focus on midwife deliveries...
WATCH: A trauma team on the battlefield of the Cape Flats
https://youtu.be/4ijh5mZC-RI
Cape Town has the highest number of reported assaults in SA and it is on the gang war battlefield of the Cape Flats that...
Sugared beverages: 'An enemy with a mask of a friend' – an edocrinologist's plea to Parliament
'It saddened me to see young students marching last year for free education while carrying sugary beverages.' Endocrinologist Dr Sundeep Ruder addresses a plea...
Getting the word out to off-the-beaten-track clinics
It's a perpetual challenge to get clinical information out to rural facilities. So Briony Chisholm, information pharmacist at the Medicines Information Centre of the University...
'Sometimes the biggest challenges in psychiatry are one's medical colleagues'
As a private psychiatrist, I often receive referrals of the sort: 'Mr X is severely stressed and depressed. Please take over management,’ No medical...