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News Update
Groote Schuur emergency trauma project kicks off for Easter weekend
The Groote Schuur Hospital Emergency Funds for Emergency Surgeries project – which has raised more than half a million rands, and which was launched...
Exorbitant security costs for Gauteng Health flagged
The DA in Gauteng has called for a review of ballooning hospital security costs, with MPL Jack Bloom saying the exorbitant amounts could rather...
French hospital staff, relatives sue over work-related suicides
French healthcare workers and families of colleagues who killed themselves have filed a legal complaint against two government Ministers over “deadly working conditions” in...
Trump launches probe into medicines tariffs
The Trump administration’s latest step towards imposing tariffs on imported medicines means Americans could face higher prices and more shortages of critical drugs, warn...
Transplant doctors remove pig kidney from patient after four months
An Alabama woman who lived with a pig kidney for a record 130 days had the organ removed after her body began rejecting it,...
Nurse injects stranger with paralysing drug – for no reason
A British nurse injected a complete stranger with a deadly muscle-relaxing anaesthetic for no reason other than “seeking to play God”, a court has...
UK’s first baby born to woman with transplanted womb
A “miracle” baby girl has become the first child in the UK to be born to a mother using a donated womb – from...
Part of teen’s skull stored in her stomach after rare brain bleed
A teenager from England has relearned how to walk, talk and swallow again after undergoing an operation last year that is rarely carried out...
Police nab man posing as Eastern Cape hospital doctor
A man posing as a medical doctor was arrested at Nelson Mandela Academic Hospital in Mthatha last week, after a nurse, who spotted the...
Woman blocks hospital entrance with bus over department’s non-payment
A fed-up Pietermaritzburg woman, owed millions by the provincial Department of Health, used a bus to block the entrance to Townhill Hospital on Monday,...
Death toll rises in Nigeria meningitis outbreak
Nigeria is struggling with a rapidly spreading meningitis outbreak that has so far killed 151 people – children affected the most – with efforts...
Five US nurses on same hospital floor all have brain tumours
A US nursing union is calling for further investigation after an internal probe found no environmental risks within a Boston hospital where five nurses,...
Trump now turns to pharmaceuticals in tariffs war
The pharmaceutical sector appears to be next in Donald Trump's firing line, with the US President this week hinting at further carnage following his...
Gauteng Health appeals 'cancer backlog' court order
The Gauteng Department of Health has applied for leave to appeal an order – issued by the Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg) recently – compelling it...
Discovery allowed to appeal RAF medical claims ruling
Discovery Health has been granted leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) in its long-standing dispute with the Road Accident Fund...
Warning as new mpox variant spreads
Local infectious disease experts have warned people to be more vigilant regarding the new highly infectious mpox variant, Clade 1b, which has been reported...
USAID cuts force HIV/TB services into business rescue
A USAID-funded non-profit organisation that provided community HIV and TB services to thousands of people around South Africa has voluntarily placed itself in business...
Oxygen plant tender probe delayed
Public Works & Infrastructure Minister Dean Macpherson has called for the Independent Development Trust’s new board to order lifestyle audits into its senior management,...
Health Department staffer in dual job as councillor must pay back the money
An ANC ward councillor in Limpopo’s Elias Motsoaledi Local Municipality has been lambasted by the Public Protector for drawing salaries from both the council...
Kennedy enrages supporters by now endorsing MMR vaccine
An endorsement of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccination by US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr this past weekend...
Regulations address sick notes issued by traditional healers
Legal experts have pointed out that under proposed regulations, published for public comment last year, only registered traditional healers will be able to issue...
Palestinian medics killed, buried in mass grave, UN says
Palestinians held funerals last week for 15 medics and emergency responders killed by Israeli troops in southern Gaza, after their bodies and ambulances were...
Supreme Court rules for FDA in flavoured vapes dispute
The US Supreme Court has unanimously overturned a lower court ruling and found the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) acted lawfully when it blocked...
Progress in reducing child deaths under threat, UN warns
Recent funding cuts have put decades of progress in child survival at risk, say global experts, calling for increased investments, service integration, and innovations...
Senior Namibian officials ordered to use state hospitals
Namibia will be upgrading its public health facilities to a standard “suitable for the President to use them” – after an announcement that from...
Victorian diseases on the rise in Britain, warn doctors
Doctors in England have raised concerns over a rise in Victorian diseases, such as scabies, and growing health inequalities caused by poor-quality housing, air pollution and access to transport.
A...
UK draws up new disease-threat watch list
Britain has a new watch list of 24 infectious diseases that could pose the greatest future threat to public health, the aim being to...
Court orders urgent action to address Gauteng cancer treatment backlog
The unacceptable, unlawful delay in providing treatment to Gauteng cancer patients, which has resulted in some of them dying, has been slammed by the...
BHF loses low-cost benefit options legal battle
The government says proposed low-cost benefit options (LCBOs) will only enrich medical aid schemes, and do not adequately cover low-income South Africans – unlike...
Eastern Cape Health embroiled in R300m tender scandal
The Eastern Cape Health Department has been linked to a massive IT tender through a chain of revelations, including that officials and the winning...
Bara opens R26m children’s burns unit
The NPO Surgeons for Little Lives unveiled a state-of-the-art children’s burns unit at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital last week, with staff saying not even...
State turns to mining firms, Discovery to plug HIV and TB funding gaps
Mining companies that have, traditionally, provided drugs and treatment to combat HIV and TB in their workforces, are being asked to consider rolling out...
Motsoaledi not giving up on regulating cannabis edibles
Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi is sticking to his guns about the need for regulations relating to food containing cannabis, despite President Cyril Ramaphosa’s decision...
New antibiotic approved to treat UTIs
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the first new antibiotic to treat UTIs in 30 years. The medication, gepotidacin, targets E. coli bacteria,...
Now Trump pulls plug on childhood vaccines
The Trump administration is to halt its funding for Gavi, which helps buy vaccines for children in poor countries, and reduce its efforts to...
Top FDA boss resigns over RFK Jr’s ‘misinformation’
A senior American health official, who was seen as a guardrail against any future politicisation of the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of life-saving...
Unvaccinated US measles patients display vitamin A toxicity
Several children admitted to hospital with measles in Texas and New Mexico are displaying symptoms of vitamin A toxicity, doctors have said, adding that...
WHO to cut jobs, slash budget by a fifth
The US funding cuts have created havoc at the World Health Organisation (WHO), which is being forced to reduce staff numbers and the scale...
Malaria caused DRC ‘mystery deaths’
Malaria has been confirmed as the mystery illness that killed 52 people in the DRC earlier this year and affected nearly 1 000 others,...
Chinese team reports xenotransplant and first-step liver experiment
A Chinese patient is the third person in world known to be living with a gene-edited pig kidney, with the research team also reporting...