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News Update
Historic KZN Children’s Hospital opens new centres
Efforts to re-establish the iconic KwaZulu-Natal Children’s Hospital in Durban have received a major boost with the completion of another phase of renovations, celebrated...
Development Bank investment to help Africa make its own medicines
The African Development Bank (AfDB) has launched the African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation, aimed at improving the continent’s access to technologies for making medicines, vaccines...
Home Affairs Minister says Magudumana's arrest 'legal'
The Department of Home Affairs is challenging Dr Nandipha Magudumana’s urgent court application regarding her arrest in Tanzania, with Minister Aaron Motsoaledi saying she...
Health bosses must abide by free treatment order
Health departments countrywide have been issued with a circular by the national department ordering that free healthcare services be given to pregnant women and...
SA’s largest medical stores facility opened at Charlotte Maxeke
Humanitarian organisation Gift of the Givers unveiled a new, multimillion-rand medical stores facility at Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital last week, having donated R60m for...
Zambia's cardiac specialists get help from US
Zambia, which also suffers from a scarcity of healthcare personnel, with fewer than 10 cardiac specialists in both the government and private sector for...
Opposition parties reject NHI Bill in current form
Most of the opposition parties on Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Health have opposed the National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill, citing the probability of tender...
Western Cape mulls freezing health posts as wage deal threatens jobs
The Western Cape’s Health Department has threatened to freeze more than 2 000 jobs after Treasury’s warning that the state’s wage settlement with public...
FDA approves pill for menopausal hot flushes
The US Food and Drug Administration have given the nod to Japanese drugmaker Astellas Pharm’s non-hormonal pill Veozah to treat hot flushes linked to...
Two die as malaria cases rise in Limpopo
Malaria has claimed the lives of two people in Limpopo, with 1 423 cases being reported over the past two weeks, according to the...
Cancer drugs shortage sees Eastern Cape state patients suffer
The Eastern Cape Health Department has a shortage of critical chemotherapy drugs, with doctors who are treating blood and bone marrow cancers fighting for...
Cancer replaces Covid in insurance claims – Liberty
Cancer and lifestyle-related conditions have returned as the leading drivers of claims payouts, according to life insurer Liberty’s latest statistics, with cancer making up...
Phaahla to enlist private sector help for psychiatric assessments
Health Minister Joe Phaahla last week said he was negotiating with private hospitals to take in detainees needing pretrial psychiatric assessments because public hospitals...
Northern Cape buckling under financial stress and no full-time HoD
The Northern Cape Department of Health has been without a permanent head since 2020 – it’s had at at least two acting heads of...
First measles, now mumps outbreak in SA
The National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) has confirmed an outbreak of mumps in South Africa, saying recent data shows unexpected, steady increases in...
Clinic turns away pregnant Zimbabwean teenager
Gauteng Health authorities are investigating a clinic in the Ekurhuleni metro after a Zimbabwean teenager was refused help in terminating her pregnancy because she...
HPCSA should revoke Magudumana’s licence: DA
The DA is calling on the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) to revoke the licence of Dr Nandipha Magudumana in light of...
UK chemists to issue scripts without GP referrals for several conditions
To free up millions of family doctor appointments, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak
is launching a scheme under which 7m people a year, suffering from...
UK first as baby born from three people’s DNA
In a UK first, a baby has been born using three people’s DNA, the pioneering technique being an attempt to prevent children from being...
FDA recalls 500 000 contaminated Covid tests
More than half a million DIY Covid tests have been recalled by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which said it had “significant...
Dis-Chem CEO bows out after four decades
Pharmaceutical retailer Dis-Chem’s CEO Ivan Saltzman, who founded the company in 1978 with his wife Lynette, is stepping down from his position at the...
WHO ends mpox global health emergency
The World Health Organization (WHO) has ended the global health emergency for mpox, just days after it declared the end of the global health emergency...
Court orders state to end hospital, school, load shedding within 60 days
In a shock verdict last week, the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) ruled that all hospitals, clinics, schools and police stations should be exempted from...
State plans to use private hospitals to slash psychiatric assessment queues
Health Minister Joe Phaahla says that in future, mental health patients awaiting trial could have psychiatric observations in private hospitals, as government patients wait...
Cipla to produce anti-HIV injection in Benoni, Durban
The South African arm of Indian drug company Cipla has confirmed that a generic version of the two-monthly HIV prevention injection, CAB-LA (long-acting cabotegravir),...
Business plea to keep medical aids under NHI
Business Unity SA (Busa) pleaded with the government at the Summit to allow medical schemes to continue operating under National Health Insurance (NHI), to...
Overcrowded hospital transfers 29 pregnant women
A total of 29 pregnant women, who were sleeping on the floor at Dora Nginza Hospital in Nelson Mandela Bay and not being given...
SIU Covid corruption probes plod on with little action
The updated, ‘Third Final Report’ by the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) into Covid-related corruption reveals the mammoth scale of the brazen plundering and looting:...
Gauteng clinics still denying treatment for pregnant migrants
Pregnant women who are immigrants are still being turned away from some clinics in Gauteng, despite an April High Court ruling that pregnant women...
Eastern Cape doctor shot and killed
Police are searching for four people who shot and killed a doctor inside his surgery in Gqeberha last Wednesday night.
Police spokesperson Captain Andre Beetge...
Nine Gauteng hospitals still without permanent CEOs
Nine out of 37 public hospitals in Gauteng are still being run by acting bosses, with two of them having already gone 12 months...
Contract chaos blamed for hospitals food shortages
Over-contracting several suppliers and non-payment by the Department of Health (DoH) are causing chaos in Gauteng’s hospitals, the long-standing cash flow problems and backlog...
Covid the final straw for SA's abandoned children
South Africa has one of the highest rates of child abandonment in the world, (10 000 per year), one in three of them dying...
Ministerial committee to address maternal and newborn health
It has been reported that South Africans still face challenges when accessing antenatal care visits and skilled birth attendants, Health Minister Joe Phaahla said...
WHO ends Covid global state of emergency
The World Health Organisation has declared the Covid global health emergency over, nearly 40 months after it was first declared a public health emergency...
Soweto hospital’s first heart surgery saves hero pupil
Emergency staff at Bheki Mlangeni District Hospital (BMDH) in Jabulani, Soweto, saved a Grade 12 pupil’s life last month by performing their first heart...
Aspen signs deal with US biotech group
SA’s biggest generic drugmaker, Aspen Pharmacare, has concluded a deal that will give it exclusive rights to market, distribute, use and sell American pharma...
Call for smoke-free SA – like Sweden
Health experts are calling for a smoke-free South Africa, urging President Cyril Ramaphosa to emulate Sweden’s policy that combines tobacco control methods with harm...
Another Covid jab-related death, but more highly unlikely
A third person has died after receiving the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine in South Africa, but it’s very unlikely, says an immunisation expert, that...
New boss for HPCSA
Former North West Health MEC Dr Magome Masike has been appointed to take over as the new CEO of the Health Professions Council of...