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Deaths blamed on violent, reckless thuggery of striking healthcare workers
Whatever sympathy striking healthcare workers hoped to achieve in support of their many grievances has almost certainly been dashed by their violent, intimidatory and...
Callous disregard at 'dirty', 'filthy', 'unsafe' Rahima Moosa – Ombud
After a year-long investigation, the Health Ombudsman has made damning findings against the CEO of the Rahima Moosa Mother & Child Hospital, saying the...
Hospitals and patients bear the brunt of disruptive Nehawu strike
While the National Education Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) received sympathy for the issues over which its members went on strike this week,...
High rate of eating disorders among children – global meta-analysis
In the first global analysis of its kind, involving 63 000 participants in 32 studies from 16 countries, researchers have found that more than...
Hospitals to be exempt from load shedding but it won't happen overnight
The good news is that hospitals are among the entities to be exempted from load-shedding under the national State of Disaster regulations promulgated this...
Ecology, not antibiotic consumption, the main driver of resistance – French study
The spread of antibiotic resistance may not be primarily driven by antibiotic consumption, according to scientists, who suggest instead that its spread across Europe...
HSPCA criticised for 'limp' sanction for Limpopo MEC
The caution and reprimand issued by the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) to Limpopo Health MEC Phophi Ramathuba after last year’s viral...
Legal action threat as hospitals struggle with load shedding
As healthcare workers continue to feel the brunt of ongoing load shedding, a union is threatening to take government to court over the widespread...
Hospital patients undernourished and underfed – SA study
More than half of the patients admitted to South Africa’s public hospitals are undernourished – and most of them are the same, if not...
Health facilities under strain with no end soon to rolling power cuts
As South Africa plummets towards a potential shift to stage eight load shedding, healthcare organisations warn of the drastic effects of rolling power cuts...
WHO urges action to stem rising AMR as experts call for new neonatal drugs
In yet another grim report about rising levels of resistance to bacteria, experts warn that by 2050 an estimated 10m people will die annually...
Rising antibiotic-resistant infections prompt global study with SA hospitals
As experts sound the alarm over rising antibiotic resistance, which, according to The Lancet, was directly responsible for 1.3m deaths in 2019, the Medical...
Helen Joseph doctors’ plea for action as hospital in 'dire straits'
Doctors at the Helen Joseph Hospital (HJH) say they are on the frontline of another kind of “pandemic”: a crisis that threatens to collapse...
Urgent action needed to reduce ARV clinic stockouts – Treatment Action Campaign
At least nine Free State clinics have run out of antiretroviral medication in the past three months, and an increasing number of patients are...
Blueprint for infrastructure changes in healthcare sector over three decades
The Department of Public Works & Infrastructure (DPWI) has unveiled a blueprint, published for public comment last week, to improve the country’s healthcare infrastructure...
New STI guidelines emphasise screening
The latest guidelines on managing the spread of sexually transmitted infections (STI) focus on the importance of screening, a shift that has been welcomed...
DoH is stuck with high hopes and scores of millions of COVID-19 doses
Despite its COVID-19 vaccination stalled and barely half of South Africans having received at least one shot, the Department of Health won’t budge on...
Clarion call for hospital load shedding exemption
There has been a growing, increasingly angry call for an end to load shedding for South African medical institutions, with healthcare providers and professional...
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...