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Medico-Legal
Foot fetishist must pay compensation over NHS medical emergency calls
A foot fetishist who made more than a thousand calls to the NHS’s 111 medical emergency service to ask call handlers about their feet...
Doctor cashed in on mesh settlement funds with unnecessary surgeries
A US doctor has admitted to talking women into unnecessary surgeries to remove their transvaginal mesh implants in an effort to get a cut of...
SIU bid to reopen settled medical negligence case dismissed with punitive costs
The SIU’s claim that Eastern Cape Health was guilty of maladministration in how it managed the litigation of a medical negligence case in the Eastern...
KZN High Court judge orders proof of jabs at high-profile trial
A KZN High Court (Durban) judge presiding over a R28m corruption case involving KZN ANC deputy chair Mike Mabuyakhulu has ordered that anyone attending...
Ramaphosa ‘gave the green light’ to Zuma’s medical parole
City Press sources have claimed what many others have already suggested must have happened – that President Cyril Ramaphosa gave Correctional Services boss Arthur...
Culpable homicide complaint after Limpopo nurse ‘refused to help’ deliver baby
The family of a baby who died a day after she was born outside a clinic in Musina wants Limpopo Health to pay for...
Buck-passing at Life Esidimeni inquest
The former Gauteng Health Department deputy DG Dr Richard Lebethe says it would have been hard for officials to foresee that patients would pick...
Warnings that UK Crime Bill breaches medical confidentiality
British doctors and nurses will be turned into police informants under Home Secretary Priti Patelʼs Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, campaigners have warned,...
Medical startup founder on trial for duping US investors out of millions
Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos, an American privately held corporation which was touted as a breakthrough health technology company, “lied and cheated” for...
Zuma’s ‘ life-threatening emergency’ again spotlights the weaponising of medical testimony
Former president Jacob Zuma’s transfer from jail to hospital over an undisclosed “life-threatening emergency” that his lawyers say will also affect his ability to...
High Court expresses doubt that ‘nonchalant’ HPCSA is fit for purpose
The continued inability of the Health Professionals Council of SA (HPCSA) to timeously register foreign-qualified medical practitioners has led to another judicial tongue lashing,...
Another court ruling against HPCSA on foreign-qualified doctors
An urgent application by foreign-qualified doctors ordering the Health Professions Council of SA to allow them to sit their Board examinations, has been granted unopposed...
National Forensic DNA Database collection failure
Close on a 100,000 prisoners guilty of serious crimes — murder, rape, sexual offences, etc) — were released without DNA samples being taken for...
Life Esidimeni inquest: one nurse to 40 patients
The Life Esidimeni inquest has heard how mentally ill patients at one of their facilities had 15 nurses caring for about 600 patients, as...
Lawsuit to legalise cannabis filed in Namibia
Cannabis should be legalised in Namibia and people imprisoned for possessing dagga should be freed, two leading members of an organisation advocating the legalisation...
Phaahla urges criminal charges for fake news about vaccinations
People who spread fake news about COVID-19 vaccinations should face criminal charges, Health Minister Joe Phaahla said last week, according to a TimesLIVE report....
US court reverses order forcing hospital to treat patient with Ivermectin
An Ohio, USA, judge has reversed a court order that forced a local hospital to treat a COVID-19 patient with the anti-parasitic drug Ivermectin,...
UK to increase storage limits for eggs, sperm and embryos to 55 years
Storage limits for eggs, sperm and embryos will be increased to a maximum of 55 years under government plans to give people greater choice...
Former National Health Laboratory Services CEO on R113m corruption charge
Joyce Mogale, the former CEO at the National Health Laboratory Services (NHLS), appeared at the Palm Ridge Specialised Commercial Crime Court in Johannesburg this...
SIU: Mkhize ignored Cabinet resolutions; processes manipulated
Former Health Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize ignored a Cabinet decision that the government's communications agency would roll out National Health Insurance (NHI) communication projects,...
US doctor fired for 'offering mask exemption letters for students'
A Florida, USA, doctor has been removed from his hospital job amid reports that he offered parents medical letters to circumvent school mask requirements,...
Zuma and Military Health Service ‘very aggrieved’ over NPA-appointed examination
Former President Jacob Zuma is considering defying a KwaZulu-Natal High Court order that a National Prosecuting Authority-appointed doctor examine him to assess his ability...
SA vaginal mesh class action following landmark judgment
Following a landmark Australian judgment and successful litigation in Canada, the UK and USA, South African lawyers are launching a class action over the injury...
Forensic procedure Acts await presidential signature 5 years on
Two Acts that could bolster DNA sampling and expedite prosecution in the fight against rape and gender-based violence have been awaiting a presidential signature...
Major Zimbabwean union body challenges compulsory vaccinations
Zimbabwe's biggest workers’ union has taken the state and several firms to court for insisting that employees must be inoculated against COVID-19 before reporting...
Life Esidimeni deaths: ‘Not the fault of Health MEC’
Former Gauteng Health MEC Dorothy Qedani Mahlangu’s counsel argued this week that the Life Esidimeni deaths could not be attributed to her. Advocate Laurence...
EFF lays criminal charges over forced sterilisations
The EFF party has filed criminal charges against the Human Rights Commission (HRC) and the Commission for Gender Equality (CGE).
A report in The Citizen...
SIU demands that Mkhize and family repay R4m
The Special Investigations Unit has accused former Health Minister Zweli Mkhize of “unlawful and improper conduct” and wants his family to repay R4m from...
US judge rules COVID patient must get Ivermectin
A US lawsuit may force an Ohio hospital to give one of its COVID patients Ivermectin, the anti-parasitic drug that has been embraced as...
Committee told that cannabis use Bill is ’racist and outdated’
A draft Bill providing for the private use and cultivation of cannabis has come under fire at Parliament. An EWN report notes that Parliament’s...
Judgment reserved in Vinpro application on liquor ban
Judgment in the Vinpro case against the government’s liquor ban restrictions within the Disaster Management Act (DMA) has been reserved.
Adjourning the case, Western Cape...
Dr Hoosen Haffejee’s 1978 injury ‘points to strangulation’
A pathology expert told the reopened inquest into the 1978 death of apartheid era dentist and activist Dr Hoosen Haffejee that there were at...
Assassination of whistleblowing Gauteng Health finance director
Babita Deokaran, the “exemplary” chief director of financial accounting at Gauteng Health and a witness in the Special Investigation Unit’s probe into R332m of...
Semenya: Correction to critical testosterone study raises appeal hopes
The legal representatives of South African athlete Caster Semenya believe that a recent correction to a critical testosterone study in the British Journal of...
Alcohol sales ban ‘requires national not provincial response’
The COVID-19 pandemic is a national disaster – and so it must be navigated at national level, the Western Cape High Court heard this...
COVID-19 no-fault compensation fund details still vague
Four months after the Health Department gazetted the establishment of the no-fault compensation fund, aimed at protecting citizens injured during the COVID-19 vaccination rollout,...
ConCourt reserves judgment on Tembisa Hospital cerebral palsy matter
The Constitutional Court reserved judgment last week on an application for leave to appeal a finding that negligent omission by medical staff at Tembisa...
Second set of fraud charges but Northern Cape Health official still working
The acting head of the Northern Cape Department of Health has been arrested for a second time this year for fraud and contraventions of...
Tobacco giant warns of economic impact for Botswana of new Bill
Botswana's tobacco sector says the Tobacco Control Bill, which has been passed by Parliament and is now awaiting the country’s president's stamp of approval,...
Limpopo might ban booze sales to unvaccinated people
Limpopo health MEC Phophi Ramathuba says the province is lobbying the alcohol industry to look at several proposals, including preventing unvaccinated people from buying...