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News Update
R7bn medico-legal claims disparity in Gauteng Health report
Gauteng Health has come under fire from the legislature’s Health Portfolio Committee after discrepancies were noted in its 2023/24 financial report, with chairperson Rebecca...
90% of SA students, including medical, want jobs abroad
At least 90% of university students – including those studying medicine – want to work abroad when they’re qualified, seeking greener pastures.
This is according...
SA paramedics’ daily dice with danger
Emergency services workers should not – and do not expect to be – robbed or held at gunpoint while saving lives, but it is happening...
FDA issues compounded ketamine products warning
The US Food & Drug Administration has flagged the increasing use of compounded ketamine products for treating disorders like depression, anxiety, PTSD and OCD,...
Indian factory linked to cough syrup deaths allowed to reopen
India's Uttar Pradesh state has permitted the resumption of most production at a factory owned by Marion Biotech, whose cough syrups Uzbekistan linked to...
Non-medical staff allowed to perform amputations, brain procedures
British medical colleges are up in arms, and have called “extraordinary” meetings over non-medical staff being allowed to operate on skulls and brains, and...
SIU orders Health official’s pension freeze
The Special Tribunal has interdicted the Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF) from paying R2m pension benefits to former Mpumalanga Health assistant director Tshegofatso Moralo,...
SAHPRA on alert for illicit bulk codeine syrup sales
The SA Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) recently collaborated with the investigative TV programme Carte Blanche in uncovering the illicit bulk sale of codeine-based...
UK Prime Minister defends plan to phase out smoking
A plan to phase out cigarette sales in the UK, raising the legal smoking age every year by a year until eventually no one...
FDA still not satisfied with Philips recall
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is still not satisfied with how technology company Philips has handled a major product recall and instructed the...
100 dead as cholera rages through Zimbabwe
Schools have been closed and gatherings restricted as a resurgent cholera outbreak rampages through Zimbabwe, with diarrhoea surveillance being activated countrywide and cooking banned...
Digital Vibes-linked official’s case postponed
National Department of Health official Popo Maja, charged with corruption linked to the controversial Digital Vibes case, has had his case postponed to 13...
Biggest healthcare strike in US history as 75 000 down tools
In what unions are calling the largest healthcare strike ever in America, staff at hundreds of Kaiser Permanente hospitals and medical facilities stopped work...
Corruption-busting Eastern Cape Health HoD sidelined by premier
Last week MedicalBrief reported exclusively that Dr Rolene Wagner, the award-winning head of the Eastern Cape Health Department, was about to be sidelined. This...
SA’s malnutrition crisis: 15 000 hospitalised in 2022/23
Thousands of people – and children – in South Africa are starving, the high unemployment rate and teenage pregnancy being contributors to acute, severe...
FDA scrutiny for weight-loss drugs over suicidal thoughts
Authorities in the US have red-flagged various diabetic drugs approved for weight loss after the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) was found to have...
Biovac partners with Korea on meningitis jab for Africa
A memorandum of understanding (MOU) has been signed between South African biopharmaceutical manufacturer Biovac and Korea-based vaccine-maker EuBiologics for the technology transfer of a...
‘Cost containment’ will add to health woes – Phaahla
Health Minister Dr Joe Phaahla has said that although budget cuts are understandable, the public health sector was “very sensitive” to these and already...
Lauren Dickason: 'I sleep with teddy bears embroidered with their names.'
Former South African doctor Lauren Dickason, who is awaiting sentencing for the murder of her three daughters in New Zealand two years ago, has...
Nurses versus DOH in uniform stand-off
The Department of Health is scrambling to avoid a stand-off with nurses who have threatened to work in their own clothes if a dispute...
An international rash of severe botulism outbreaks
The potential severity of botulism cannot be under-estimated, after several food-related cases – one in South America that resulted in a woman being hospitalised...
Discovery, Momentum and Bonitas hike premiums for 2024
Medical aid members will have to gird their loins for sizeable premium increases by Discovery, Momentum and Bonitas from January, as inflation and other...
African Conference on Health Risk Reduction: Collaboration and decisive policies ‘vital’
When disasters strike, reactions must be swift and seamless – and not being prepared for the unexpected can mean the difference between life and...
Vapes ‘safer than cigarettes’ message backfires, says UK expert
A British health expert has warned that the message implying vaping is 95% safer than smoking has backfired, and has actually encouraged some children...
Scientists creating vaccine for next – Disease X – pandemic
As the world emerges from the Covid-19 pandemic, scientists are already developing vaccines to protect against the next one – even though they don’t...
HRC probe after Livingstone patients’ complaints
The Human Rights Commission (HRC) is initiating an investigation into the Eastern Cape’s Livingstone Hospital in Gqeberha after a growing litany of serious complaints...
Court orders Phaahla to act on fraud report
Health Minister Joe Phaahla was given until Tuesday this week to act on a widespread, R1.2bn corruption report that he had allegedly been attempting...
Expired Covid jabs worth billions destroyed – Phaahla
Health Minister Joe Phaahla has confirmed that 27m doses of unused J&J and Pfizer Covid-19 vaccines, worth R3.8bn, have been destroyed, as will thousands...
First-of-its-kind heart lifeline for Durban man
A patient with stage four heart failure, and who was no longer responding to treatment, has been given a new lease on life after...
UK antibiotic warning after suicidal thoughts report
British authorities have issued an alert to healthcare professionals prescribing fluoroquinolone antibiotics (ciprofloxacin, delafloxacin, levofloxacin, moxifloxacin, ofloxacin), reminding them to be alert to the...
Concern from FDA committee about ALS cell therapy
US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) reviewers have expressed misgivings about the investigational amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) treatment debamestrocel from BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics, before...
Japan greenlights Alzheimer’s treatment
Japan has become the second country, after the USA, to approve the drug Leqembi – developed by partners Eisai and Biogen – a treatment for slowing...
Counterfeit cancer drug blinds patients in Pakistan
Pakistan officials are investigating two local distributors of Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche’s Avastin cancer drug after 12 diabetic patients in Punjab went blind when they...
Doubt cast on infection link in quadruple amputee case
Officials in the US have queried a recent case of a California woman who had all four limbs amputated after apparently developing a life-threatening...
High TB death rate, a worry – Phaahla
The Department of Health has raised concerns over the death rate among TB patients in the country – the WHO estimated 56 000 deaths...
Early cancer diagnosis critical for children, say SA experts
With about 1 000 children diagnosed with cancer in South Africa every year, there is a critical need to focus on early diagnosis.
According to...
Woman who shunned chemotherapy for natural remedies dies
A US woman who fiercely resisted chemotherapy for her colon cancer died after trying to cure the disease naturally, and after releasing a string of...
Majority of hypertension patients not adequately treated – WHO report
The first ever report from the WHO on the devastating global impact of high blood pressure – and ways to beat this silent killer...
Needle-free anaphylaxis drug thwarted by FDA
A US drug company – ARS Pharma – which had been hoping for FDA approval last week of its flagship product, a needle-free treatment...
US Covid hospital admissions and deaths rising
The number of Americans being admitted to hospital with Covid are climbing, sitting at 20 538 per week, according to US Centres for Disease...