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News Update
HPCSA denies implementing unlawful regulations
The Health Professions Council of SA (HPCSA) has denied accusations that it was implementing “unlawful” regulations with exorbitant fees being levied to registered practitioners.
It...
Muslim groups challenge nurse dress code policy
Muslim associations have requested exemptions for Muslims after the issuing of the national Department of Health’s National Nurses Uniform Policy Dress Code, which includes...
HFA boss backs low-cost benefit options
A low-cost benefit medical aid option should complement the NHI roll-out, CEO of the Health Funders Association (HFA) Phumelele Makatini has said, backing similar...
Overseas-trained doctors protest against unemployment
A group of unemployed doctors, who trained abroad, marched to the Union Buildings in Pretoria yesterday to complain they are yet to practise, despite...
‘All systems go’ for SIU Tembisa Hospital probe
A proclamation issued by President Cyril Ramaphosa last month has been gazetted, paving the way for the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) to probe Tembisa...
Chemicals firm fire doubles residents’ heart disease, cancer risk – experts
Toxicology and epidemiology experts have warned that thousands of people around the former UPL chemicals warehouse in Durban face two to three times the...
AG slams Gauteng Health for failing to spend R2.7bn, wasting R2.6bn
The Gauteng Health Department has been lambasted by the Auditor-General (AG) for R2.26bn irregular expenditure in the 2022/2023 financial year, R15m fruitless and wasteful...
SA experts torchbearers in new concussion treatment
South African experts have played a leading role in developing new world guidelines on how to prevent and reduce the risk of concussion in...
MTN cuts services to Eastern Cape Health, Afrox threatens to suspend
MTN last month joined the list of service providers to temporarily withdraw services because the Eastern Cape Department of Health failed to pay its...
FDA approves first natalizumab biosimilar for MS
There’s new hope for some people who suffer relapsing forms of multiple sclerosis (MS) — the chronic, inflammatory disease of the nervous system thought to...
Caffeine levels in energy drinks spark calls for ban
With a single serving of some new high-caffeine energy drinks containing as much caffeine as six Coca-Colas, paediatricians and parents are calling for them...
Dickason to be sentenced in December
Convicted murderer Lauren Dickason’s sentencing is marked down for 19 December, with New Zealand’s Justice Cameron Mander – who had ordered a number of...
Security guards block hospital entry over salary backlog
Entrances to Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe Hospital in Kimberley were closed off on Monday by security staff who claimed they had not been paid their...
France to ban disposable e-cigs
The French Government is drawing up plans for a national plan to fight tobacco use, including a ban on disposable electronic cigarettes, according to...
Australia's nurses leaving in droves
It seems South Africa and the UK are not the only places suffering a nursing haemorrhage: Australia’s New South Wales state is seeing an...
Doctors invest in new private hospital in Gauteng
Although the looming NHI has around 40% of medical personnel threatening to leave the country, 36 of South Africa’s top medical experts are committed...
BHF calls for Minister’s powers in NHI to be slashed
The Board of Healthcare Funders (BHF) had pleaded for a reduction in the Health Minister’s powers in the National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme, saying...
Gauteng Health owes millions in unpaid hospital electricity bills
The Gauteng Health Department owes R421m to municipalities for electricity, with R387.5m owed to Johannesburg alone – due, according to Health & Wellness MEC...
Senior Northern Cape Health officials back in court over PPE tender
Senior Northern Cape Health Department officials were this week granted bail in the Kimberley Magistrate’s Court where they face fraud charges.
Former acting head of...
Deadline for state to submit Covid vaccine documents
Today is the court-ordered deadline for the national Health Department to provide access to its secret Covid-19 vaccine contracts, but activists who had prompted...
Global ingredients’ shortage threatens SA medicine supply, warns Adcock
Pharmaceuticals manufacturer Adcock Ingram has called for government incentives to give South African companies a reason to stay in business, warning that continuing global...
World first as UK rolls out seven-minute cancer jab
Britain’s NHS will be the first state-run health service in the world to offer an “under-the-skin” injection to hundreds of cancer patients, which could...
UCT team develops device to speed up STI diagnosis
A research group from the University of Cape Town (UCT) is developing a user-friendly technology to rapidly detect bacterial vaginosis (BV) and associated genital...
CDC issues new guidelines on sepsis management
The US Centres for Disease Control & Prevention has released new guidelines for hospitals to detect and treat sepsis, a factor in 1.7m admissions...
Medical aid flags rise in women’s chronic illness
Chronic diseases among female medical scheme members are increasing, according to Discovery Health, which noted an upward spiral from 24% in June 2017 to...
UFS team probes deadly fungi that kill millions of people
South African researchers are working to combat diseases caused by fungal infections, which affect more than 3m people a year in this country, and...
Frustrated Free State community closes clinic
Community members in a section of Botshabelo in the Free State closed their local clinic last Wednesday in protest against a staff shortage at...
Live worm found in Australian woman’s brain
A Canberra neurosurgeon recently pulled a live, 8cm-long parasitic roundworm from the brain of her 64-year-old patient.
The New South Wales resident had first been...
New ‘spiral’ tampon shape approved by FDA
The US Food & Drug Administration has just given the green light to a newly-designed tampon – created by two women – that will change...
Aspen and Lilly seal drug deal for SA
A deal that is expected to close in the first quarter of next year will see Aspen Pharmacare partnering with a subsidiary of US...
Eviction order against KZN nurse who refuses to leave hospital duplex
A nurse who refuses to move out of Durban’s Inkosi Albert Luthuli Central Hospital residential village, where she has lived in a three-bedroom duplex...
FDA approves RSV jab for use in pregnant women
The US Food and Drug Administration has approved Pfizer’s respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine for use in women during the middle of the third...
Another new Covid variant alert
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has reported its first case of another new, highly mutated Covid-19 variant BA.2.86, which has also been identified...
Alleged 'bid-rigger’ scores millions in Gauteng Health contracts
Johannesburg businessman Paul Mojalefa Mokoena, previously implicated in irregular contracts at Tembisa Hospital, has been accused of repeated bid-rigging at the Gauteng Department of...
Delays for patients as Charlotte Maxeke left without angio suite
Staff at the beleaguered Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital have slammed a badly planned decommissioning process of a specialised angiogram machine, causing a three-month delay...
Public comments deadline extended for NHI Bill
The deadline for written submissions on the National Health Insurance Bill has been extended from 1 September to 15 September, Parliament's Select Committee on...
WHO holds first traditional medicine summit
The WHO’s first global summit on traditional medicine kicked off last week in India, and while the health agency seeks to “collect evidence and...
Mixed reaction to new smoking, vaping Bill at public hearing
The public appears divided over the new Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Control Bill, with the first public hearings – in North West...
First UK womb transplant with donated uterus
In the first British case of its kind, surgeons carried out a womb transplant on a woman with a rare condition who received a uterus donated...
FDA approves rare bone disorder drug
The US Food and Drug Administration has approved French drugmaker Ipsen’s drug for a rare bone disorder, making it the first treatment available to...