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Big Tobacco link sees high-profile delegates pull out of SA TB conference
The withdrawal from this week’s South African Tuberculosis Conference in Durban by high profile delegates, including the World Health Organisation and the Bill &...
Foreign patients: a burden on the system, or scapegoats for poor management?
Limpopo Health MEC Phophi Ramathuba's verbal assault on a Zimbabwean patient at Bela-Bela Hospital, has again thrust forward the contentious issue of foreigners' access...
Doctors urge crisis management as Eastern Cape Hospitals collapse
Doctors at the three hospitals comprising Gqeberha’s Livingstone Tertiary Hospital have called on the Eastern Cape Department of Health to move to “crisis management”...
40-hour ambulance delay, then overnight wait outside emergency unit
A 90-year-old British woman in Cornwall waited 40 hours wait for an ambulance, only to be stuck in the vehicle overnight outside the accident...
Health professionals unite in "I Am" movement against state victimisation
A 130-strong group of senior, highly-regarded health professionals have come together to publicly highlight the deteriorating conditions at state health institutions and stand united...
HRC to monitor Rahima Moosa, calls for reclassification of hospital
As the Rahima Moosa Mother and Child Hospital turned its focus on whistle-blower doctor Tim de Maayer this week – instead of addressing the...
Viruses paused during COVID pandemic are on their way back
COVID-19 and related restrictions have led to unexpected health consequences worldwide, with both adults and children displaying lower naturally-acquired immunity against other diseases, making...
Pandemic wipes out a decade of improvement in maternal health in SA
The COVID-19 epidemic has had a severe effect on maternal and perinatal mortality in South Africa, according to the SA Health Review of 2021,...
US highway death toll messages have opposite effect, cause more crashes
Displaying the highway death toll on USA message boards is a common awareness campaign, but research has shown that this tactic actually leads to...
MAC advisories on COVID-19: Heel dragging despite govt promises of transparency
Despite a publicly stated commitment to transparency and several Promotion of Access to Information requests , there have been “significant delays” in the National...
Survey confirms difficulties of SA’s key populations in accessing healthcare
People who belong to, what is referred to in HIV jargon as key populations (KPs), including men who have sex with men (MSM), people...
Gender Commission under crossfire over ‘ill-advised’ stance on vaccinations
The national Department of Health (DoH) and a formidable array of medical professional organisations have criticised the Gender Commission for Equality (GCE) for its...
UK slammed for ‘baffling’ response to SA expertise, as Omicron sweeps the world
Top medical scientists in Britain have again come under fire for ignoring the expertise of respected South African COVID-19 researchers after the Omicron variant...
Mounting concern over SA’s child and teen pregnancy crisis
Nearly half a million teens aged 15-19 fell pregnant in the past four years, as well as another 14,000 of the ages 10-15, writes...
Crisp: Private sector is to blame for much of SA’s wasted healthcare spend
Much of the waste in SA’s healthcare expenditure is the fault of “unjustifiable private sector costs and gross public sector inefficiencies”, says Dr Nicholas...
Momentum Metropolitan Health positions itself for implementation of NHI
Momentum Metropolitan Health Group has entered an empowerment deal that gives 32% of the business labour unions and black medical professionals, a move speculated...
Vaccination prospects boosted by Sisonke results and reversal on Astra-Zeneca jab
South Africa’s slow vaccination programme should get a boost from the highly encouraging results of the Sisonke clinical trial of the single-dose Johnson &...
HPCSA’s new president ponders the poisoned chalice
On the kindest reading, the guardedness of Prof Mbulaheni Simon Nemutandani, the new President of the Health Professions Council of SA (HPCSA) is understandable...
Child poverty associated with smaller, slower-growing subcortical regions — 17-year study
Children in poverty are more likely to have cognitive and behavioural difficulties than their better-off peers, a 17-year US study has found.
Plenty of past...
Vaccination prospects boosted by Sisonke results and reversal on Astra-Zeneca jab
South Africa’s slow vaccination programme should get a boost from the highly encouraging results of the Sisonke clinical trial of the single-dose Johnson &...
Violence and looting cripple healthcare across Gauteng and KZN
Violent unrest and looting in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng have decimated hospitals and health services. COVID-19 vaccination has ground to a halt. Lives are being...
Gauteng’s 3rd Wave: Crippled public hospitals put ’severe strain’ on private facilities
With a key hospital shuttered and others crippled by recurrent water shortages, Gauteng is struggling to handle its largest wave of COVID-19 yet, reports...
CDC: Breakthrough COVID-19 infections mostly rare and mild
Of the more than 130m people in the US who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, there have been reports of some 10,000 breakthrough...
CDC investigates 'relatively few' reports of myocarditis from Pfizer vaccination
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating reports that a very small number of teenagers and young adults vaccinated with mRNA...
Powerful Pfizer response to Indian variant — Public Health England
Both the Pfizer and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines showed effectiveness against symptomatic disease from the so-called Indian variant, with the Pfizer showing 88% efficacy after...
SA and world COVID deaths 3x higher than official figures — The Economist
The global death toll from COVID-19 is now 10m, threefold higher than the official estimates, according to a statistical modelling by The Economist. In...
Harness the ‘yuk factor’ to reduce meat consumption
A significant percentage of meat eaters have a disgust response to meat, making the "yuk factor" a possible intervention to help people who are...
Evidence review finds dog ownership is a risk factor for MRSA
Dog ownership is a risk factor for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) colonisation in humans, a German review and meta-analysis reports.
To get a better understanding...
Academics dismiss MAC-Vac head Schoub's angry SAMJ editorial as a 'distraction'
The dispute between leading scientists in academia and the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Vaccines' Prof Barry Schoub, continued this week in the SA Medical...
WHO report on COVID-19's Wuhan origins 'raises more questions than answers'
More than a year after the coronavirus pandemic began, the World Health Organisation has released its report laying out how the virus spread to...
Scientists savage SA's reasoning and ethics on vaccine choices
The reasoning behind the National Department of Health and the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Vaccines refusing to use the AstraZeneca vaccine locally are “muddled”,...
Political blows to AstraZeneca vaccine may boost vax hesitancy
Despite the World Health Organisation and the European regulator backing continued use, inoculations using the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine have been suspended in numerous countries, in what...
US life expectancy drops due to rise in working-age mortality — National Academy report
Increasing mortality rates among the working-age in the US since 2010 have been mainly driven by drug- and alcohol-related deaths, suicide, and cardiometabolic conditions...
Madhi's plea to government: Don't waste the AstraZeneca vaccine
Professor Shabir Madhi, eminent Medical Research Council vaccinologist and principal investigator in the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine trial locally, has urged the Health Department not to...
South Africa's AstraZeneca vaccine now on 'half-price' sale
The muddled acquisition AstraZeneca vaccine from India, found on delivery to have an April expiry date and not the normal six-month one, continues, writes...
Obesity, excess body fat may kill more in England and Scotland than smoking
Obesity and excess body fat may have contributed to more deaths in England and Scotland than smoking since 2014, according to University of Glasgow...
Wide ethnic minority health inequalities in England — GP Patient Survey data
England’s most extensive ever study of ethnic minority health in the over-55s has revealed substantial inequalities across most groups, compared with white British people....
SA needs 'all hands on deck' to avoid vaccine chaos — Scientists' Collective
For South Africans to get their lives back, they need vaccines by winter and herd immunity against COVID-19, says a Scientists’ Collective of 15...
Medical scheme resistance to ‘unfair’ vaccine funding model grows
The Department of Health’s funding model for South Africa's vaccination roll-out is “inherently unfair, unethical and illegal”, Profmed CEO Craig Comrie told MedicalBrief in...
Growing anger over SA government's vaccine 'fiasco'
South African medical scientists, joined by activist groups, health workers and opposition parties, have slammed the government and its Medical Advisory Committee (MAC) over...