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News Update
Cyril Ramaphosa: Global distribution of vaccines 'unjust and immoral'
While South Africa welcomed the donations and sharing of vaccines to developing countries, President Cyril Ramaphosa told an international summit that developing countries should...
Former Chatsworth hospital employee charged with theft of R250,000 dialysis machine
A Durban man has been arrested after allegedly stealing and selling a dialysis machine from a hospital in Chatsworth, writes SA Police Service/strong> in...
Wuhan scientists planned to release coronavirus into bat caves: Leaked papers
Wuhan and US scientists planned to release enhanced airborne coronavirus particles into Chinese bat populations to inoculate them against diseases that could jump to...
Second J & J shot substantially boosts protection against COVID, company reports
A second dose of Johnson & Johnsonʼs vaccine substantially increases its protection against COVID-19, said J&J in a statement. The New York Times reports...
Portugal: Fury over govt’s plans to lower medical training standards
Portugal’s medical organisations have responded with fury to the government’s plans for a new doctor-training model that would cut curriculum requirements and length of...
Post Office workers and pensioners face loss of medical aid cover
About 15,000 SA Post Office (Sapo) employees and pensioners may have no medical aid from next month after the Medipos medical scheme told them...
CMS ponders approval of first ever cut in medical aid premiums
Medical aid role players are looking to the Council for Medical Schemes (CMS) to see if it will approve what is described as the...
3,000 French healthcare workers suspended for no COVID shot
Thousands of healthcare workers across France have been suspended without pay for failing to get a required COVID-19 vaccine, according to a report on...
SA medical scientists scoff at UK’s red list claims
South African scientists have challenged the UK for using inaccurate claims about the prevalence in SA of a COVID-19 variant that can “circumvent” vaccines...
Charlotte Maxeke cardiac unit dysfunctional and high-risk
The Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital pacemaker lab has been declared structurally unsafe, says Bongiwe Gambu, spokesperson for the MEC for the Gauteng department...
Sale of AstraZeneca vaccines ‘resulted in up to 22,000 deaths’ of SA elderly
The lives of 18,000 to 22,000 elderly South Africans could have been saved had the country not sold 1.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca...
NICD: SA should consider vaccinating adolescents against COVID
South Africa should consider vaccinating adolescents against the coronavirus according to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), reports Bloomberg.
“Given the high prevalence of...
Patient stabs two women doctors in Kimberley hospital casualty
A male patient has stabbed two female doctors in the casualty ward of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe Hospital in Kimberley, reports TimesLIVE.
In September last year,...
100m COVID vaccines will expire in rich countries by Christmas
An “unconscionable” 100m stockpiled COVID vaccines will expire in rich countries by Christmas while poorer nations are starved of supplies, reports The Independent.
The research...
UCT and Stellenbosch academics line up behind mandatory COVID-19 vaccines
The Senate of the University of Cape Town (UCT) Senate has voted overwhelmingly to make vaccines mandatory for all staff and students from next...
Intersexuality row: UCT’s VC backs off but specialist says it's a ‘necessary conversation’
Social media criticism of a University of Cape Town seminar on science and intersexuality has drawn an apology from UCT’s vice-chancellor and the abandonment...
Action group calls for withdrawal of ‘catastrophic’ Compensation Fund regulations
The Injured Workers’ Action Group (IWAG) has called for the immediate withdrawal of the “catastrophic” new Compensation Fund regulations, saying they will have prejudicial...
SA doctors want an ‘open disclosure’ culture over medical mistakes
The overwhelming majority of South African doctors (92%) believe healthcare workers must be in an environment where they can admit errors, apologise and learn...
Cancer Alliance: R50bn needed for cancer over next decade
South Africa’s Cancer Alliance has released a groundbreaking report spelling out the anticipated costs of cancer over the next 10 years, reports MedicalBrief.
With cases...
Private ambulances shun road accidents over RAF impasse
Private ambulances are refusing to attend to KwaZulu-Natal crash scenes as their battle over non-payments with the Road Accident Fund (RAF) remain unresolved, reports...
Australian regulator bans off-label Ivermectin use as prescriptions climb
Ivermectin has been banned from off-label use in Australia, except by certain specialists, after the number of people using it as aN unproven treatment...
Suicide levels in Malawi and Kenya rocket as pandemic bites
Suicides have surged in Malawi and Kenya with a 72% surge in the first quarter in Malawi and more suicides in Kenya in the...
South Africa’s top’s world misery list in foetal alcohol syndrome
SA again tops an international list of misery, this time with the world’s highest prevalence of foetal alcohol syndrome, reports MedicalBrief.
Authorities are concerned about...
US claims that SA’s Cuban doctors may have been trafficked
The 187 Cuban doctors who were deployed to SA to help fight the COVID-19 pandemic may have been forced to do so. An IOL...
Pneumonic plague outbreak in Madagascar
Thirty cases of pneumonic plague have been reported in Madagascar, according to the latest communicable disease threats report from the European Centre for Disease...
NHS trials blood test to detect cancer before symptoms appear
Thousands of people will take part in an NHS trial of a simple blood test that can detect more than 50 types of cancer...
Another key pro-Ivermectin meta-analysis is retracted
Less than a month after the withdrawal of a widely touted preprint claiming that Ivermectin could successfully treat COVID-19, the authors of a meta-analysis...
HPCSA boss suspended one day, unsuspended the next; wants legal costs paid
Newly appointed health minister Joe Phaahla has lifted the precautionary suspension of <strong>Health Professions Council of SA's</strong> registrar and CEO David Motau. Last Thursday...
SAMRC/UCT analysis: Pandemic deaths in South Africa approach 300,000
As well as almost 75,000 death directly attributed to the pandemic, most of the 222,000 excess deaths recorded over the past year are probably...
‘Not a single vaccinated person in COVID-19 high care ward’ — Groote Schuur doctor
As Western Cape hospital admissions increase amid the COVID-19 third wave, Dr Marc Mendelson has yet to see a vaccinated person develop COVID pneumonia,...
WHO confirms Marburg virus discovered for first time in West Africa
The World Health Organisation has cofirmed one death in Guinea from Marburg virus, a highly infectious haemorrhagic fever similar to Ebola. It marks the...
Nursing unions: State hospitals like rudderless ships, with acting CEOS
The shortage of appropriately skilled medical leadership at Gauteng hospitals is frustrating nursing trade unions, reports the Sunday Independent.
Apparently, despite the province reeling under...
J&J vaccines from Gqeberha plant wing their way to AU states
The first monthly shipment of Johnson & Johnson (J&J) COVID-19 vaccines secured by the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust for African Union (AU) member started...
Wastewater analysis identifies KZN unrest as super-spreader event
The Institute for Water and Wastewater Technology (IWWT) at the Durban University of Technology has identified the recent civil unrest in KwaZulu-Natal as a...
WHO reclassifies India variant as being of global concern
The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced that the triple-mutant B.1.617, known as the India variant, is now classified as a variant of global...
SIU still probing R82m tender linked to Mkhize
The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) said an investigation into a R82m tender issued to a company allegedly linked to Health Minister Zweli Mkhize’s associates...
FDA recommends TB Alliance's MDR-TB treatment regimen
Independent experts of a US Food and Drug Administration advisory panel voted in favour of the not-for-profit TB Alliance’s treatment for drug resistant tuberculosis, as...
Drug pricing committee denies 'ambiguity' in its formula
The advisory body that guides the Health minister on medicine price increases says there is no ambiguity in the formula it applied, contrary to...
With NICD reporting two more listeriosis deaths, fatalities reach 193
Two more people have died from listeriosis in South Africa, raising the death toll to 193, according to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases...
Interim results show affordable hepatitis C treatment to be safe
An affordable hepatitis C treatment has been shown to be safe and effective, with very high cure rates for patients including hard-to-treat cases, in...