HomePublic Health
Public Health
SA's sugar tax pits jobs against lifestyle diseases
As part of the Health Department's strategy to reduce obesity, SA in 2018 became the first country in Africa to introduce a sugar tax....
C-sections carry much higher mortality risk in Africa
The death rate among women undergoing a caesarean to deliver a baby is about 50 times higher in Africa than in most wealthy nations,...
The rights of foreign nationals in accessing SA healthcare
Directives recently issued by the national Health Department and Gauteng Health requiring foreign nationals to pay in full for healthcare at public facilities weren’t only...
Tough cannabis policies do not deter young people – Study
There is no evidence that tough policies deter young people from using cannabis, writes Mattha Busby for The Guardian. Analysing data about cannabis use...
Smokers misunderstand risks of smokeless tobacco product snus
American smokers mistakenly think that using snus – a moist snuff smokeless tobacco product popular in Scandinavia but newer to the United States – is...
Studies underestimate effects of alcohol consumption on younger people
Studies of the health effects of alcohol consumption may underestimate the risks of imbibing, particularly for younger people, according to a US study. This...
Truth telling about tobacco and nicotine in an e-cigarette era
Debate among public health professionals over approaches to tobacco and nicotine regulation has intensified with the rise of vaping. Researchers at the Pacific Institute for...
How safe are e-cigarettes? The debate continues
A clinical review from the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary in Scotland recently summarised the latest evidence concerning the use of e-cigarettes, writes Dr Catharine Paddock...
Comprehensive study debunks, again, the MMR/autism link
A massive 13-year followup study of more than 650,000 children strongly supports previous findings that MMR vaccination does not increase the risk for autism,...
Teens may smoke less pot in states with medical marijuana laws
When medical marijuana becomes legal in a state, teenagers there may be slightly less likely to use the drug, Reuters Health reports a US...
The Lancet Commission on Obesity recommendations 'deeply problematic'
The Lancet Commission on Obesity, three years in the making, has just been released. It is an infringement of personal freedoms and based on...
Ticking boxes instead of actually doing something to save SA's ailing health system
This is an illness we have as a country: we convene summits, appoint task teams, create war rooms, and hold press conferences, but very...
Number of suicide deaths increased since 1990
The total number of deaths from suicide increased by 6.7% globally between 1990 and 2016 to 817,000 deaths in 2016, finds a study. However,...
NHS research shows HPV screening practical and more efficacious than cytology
Screening for high risk human papillomavirus (HR-HPV) infection works well in practice and is more sensitive than cytology (smear) testing – offering greater protection...
Is marijuana as safe as we think?
Permitting pot is one thing, promoting its use is another, writes Malcolm Gladwell for The New Yorker. Especially since a cloud of mystery surrounds cannabis – including...
What a breakthrough e-cigarette study illustrates about addiction
The first large, systematic study of whether e-cigarettes help people to quit smoking was published on 30 January in the New England Journal of Medicine,...
Delay in release of private health sector report 'bad news'
The release of a final report about the state of competition in South Africa’s private health sector has been delayed again, writes Wezile Chitha,...
Fake news and celebrity fads 'put lives at risk’ — joint editorial
The editors of more than two dozen cardiology-related scientific journals worldwide have published a joint editorial to sound the alarm that medical misinformation is...
Constant cravings – Is addiction on the rise?
Addiction was once viewed as an unsavoury fringe disease, tethered to substances with killer withdrawal symptoms, such as alcohol and opium. But now the...
Little international agreement over burning issue of vaping
Despite much debate in the United Kingdom and United States there is little agreement over how safe e-cigarettes are, write University of Edinburgh public health Professor Linda...
Nigeria isn’t doing enough to reduce tobacco use. Here’s why
Tobacco remains the biggest public health threat, killing more than seven million people globally every year. The World Health Organization has recognised progress in Nigeria,...
Speed up public health decisions on scabies by skipping full-body exams
In public health settings, limiting examination for scabies to the exposed components of both limbs had high sensitivity compared to full body examination, found...
Cosatu angered by delays and Health Dept divisions over NHI
The slow pace at which the government is moving on the National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill has drawn the ire of Cosatu, which plans...
NHI plans are ‘an act of desperation’ — DA
Plans by the Minister of Health, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, to push ahead with the National Health Insurance are ‘an act of desperation ... doomed...
Exit of more than 8,000 Cuban doctors puts Brazil in a 'state of panic'
A rupture between Havana and Brazil's new far-right president-elect has triggered the immediate withdrawal of all the more than 8,000 doctors that were part...
When common sense and sound judgment go up in smoke
Government’s proposed anti-tobacco bill lacks any scientific assessment as an underlying principle of legislation, argues Tim Cohen, senior editor of Business Day. In a...
Mischievous responders misleading LGBQ researchers
Many research studies have reported on the elevated health risk and deviance of youth who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or questioning (LGBQ). But...
It's time for Canada's government to stop withholding the truth from smokers
Good public health policy empowers people to make better, informed personal health decisions – rather than punishing them – write David T Sweanor, chair...
Troublesome issues in e-cigarette policy in America
The Tobacco Harm Reduction (THR) and e-cigarette policy scene continues to evolve in a direction that will result in substantially more tobacco-related addiction, illness...
Investors pour money into addiction treatment, but quality questions remain
In the midst of a nationwide epidemic of drug addiction, the United States has a big shortage of high quality providers offering treatment to people...
Decrease in malaria deaths flatlining
Despite a few bright spots, the recently released World Malaria Report paints a gloomy picture of stagnating progress and increasing concentration of the burden...
Motsoaledi lashed for saying illegals are burdening health system
Amnesty International and the Public Protector’s Office have lashed Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi over his statement that illegal and undocumented immigrants are putting an...
Identifying potentially unsafe restaurants via patrons' search history
A new computer model links Google searches for terms like "stomach cramps" to smartphone location history data to determine which restaurants those people had...
Africa bears the brunt of the counterfeit medicine curse
Almost half the fake and low-quality medicines reported to the World Health Organisation between 2013 and 2017 were found to be in sub-Saharan Africa,...
As China's health system falters, the desperate smuggle drugs or make their own
Out of a desperation born of necessity, ordinary Chinese are buying drug ingredients online and making them up at home, reports The New York Times....
Containing the Ebola epidemic in the face of armed conflict
‘I have been responding to different disease outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for 18 years, yet I have never seen anything...
Big life expectancy gap between rich and poor contradicted by Danish study
Contrary to previous research, previous findings of huge differences in life expectancy between the rich and the poor have been contradicted by a Danish study...
Racial disparities in patient characteristics and survival after AMI
Characteristics of black patients and white patients in the US differed significantly at the time of admission for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and were...
Public Health England: Stopping smoking – What works?
Public Health England recently published Health Matters guidance focusing on the range of smoking quitting routes that are available and the evidence for their...
US FDA warns companies of ‘illegal’ e-cigarettes in crackdown on youth vaping
On 12 October the US Food and Drug Administration said it had sent letters to 21 e-cigarette companies questioning the legality of 41 of...