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REACH study: Adolescent girls and young women in Africa will use HIV prevention products
HIV prevention products can and will be used consistently by adolescent girls and young women, according to an interim study from the ongoing REACH...
Lusaka morgue analysis shows huge spike in COVID-19 deaths
A likely reason for Africa’s low incidence of COVID-19 is lack of testing and surveillance. Research at the Zambia University Teaching Hospital morgue found...
Africa’s first COVID-19 vaccine technology transfer hub
The World Health Organization and its COVAX partners are working with a South African consortium to establish the continent’s first COVID-19 mRNA vaccine technology...
Eastern Cape school study shows concerning HPV prevalence
More than three-quarters of teenage girls in two Eastern Cape schools were found to have the human papillomavirus (HPV), a study by the National...
East African medical graduates ‘lack antibiotics knowledge’ — Research report
Most medical graduates from various universities in East Africa were found to have very little practical knowledge on the use of antibiotics in clinical...
Alternative corticosteroid regimes in treatment of COVID-19
Researchers at the Stellenbosch University and Tygerberg Academic Hospital write: SARS-CoV-2 is the third known coronavirus within the past 18 years to cause severe...
SA case study sheds light on how to develop pharma manufacturing
There is ample evidence that governments can be effective economic actors to create capacity and markets through public investment and public procurement in the...
Ethical challenges in the first phase of SA's COVID-19 vaccine rollout
Researchers at the University of Stellenbosch, University of Cape Town, Groote Schuur Hospital, Western Cape Health Department, Swartland Hospital in Malmesbury, and Tygerberg Hospital...
Critics say SA alcohol ban study 'lacks methodological detail'
Is the acknowledged decline in hospital trauma admissions during the various lockdowns a result of the ban on alcohol, restrictions on people’s movement or...
SA's first national TB prevalence survey: A bleaker picture than expected
South Africa has a far higher number of people with tuberculosis (TB) than previously thought and many of them have not been diagnosed or...
Involving Uganda's traditional healers improved HIV testing and care
Traditional healers trained to administer HIV testing and counselling to their patients significantly increased the proportion of patients receiving testing and linkage to care...
Tanzanian study finds less inflammation with a traditional diet
Increased activity of the immune system of urban Tanzanians— which may increase the risk of lifestyle diseases — may be due to dietary differences...
Dominant SA variant escapes antibodies — AHRI and UKZN study
The dominant new variant of the COVID-19 virus in South Africa, 501Y.V2, can escape antibodies generated from previous infection. This means that antibodies from...
Targeted anti-malarial spraying as safe and more cost effective
Targeted Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS) intervention against malaria is not inferior to the “blanket” approach, as well as being more cost effective, found a...
COVID-19's impact in Africa 'vastly underestimated’ — BMJ study
The impact of the pandemic in Africa may be vastly underestimated, with 15-20% of deaths sampled in a Zambian post-mortem study linked to COVID-19...
Repurposing of orphan drug to control transmission of African trypanosomiasis
Repurposing the orphan drug drug Nitisinone may kill tsetse flies without harming important pollinator insects, found a study into the control of African trypanosomiasis...
12 tested KN95 mask brands used in SA fail international safety standards — UCT study
All the Chinese KN95 masks, widely imported into South Africa to counter the COVID-19 pandemic, tested in a University of Cape Town study,...
Unravelling why African ICUs have the world's highest COVID-19 mortality rates
Africa has the highest COVID-19 ICU mortality on any continent with more than half of admissions dying in hospital by the 30-day mark, found...
Massive global analysis: South Africa’s children are too short and too fat
Young South African children are too short and too fat, concludes a massive analysis pooling data from more than 2,000 studies in 200 countries...
Massive project on African DNA sets out to close the knowledge gap on mental illness
It has long been recognised that mental disorders can run in families. Indeed, severe mental illness is influenced by genes more than by any...
Meta-analysis: Significant effect of malaria-preventive drugs in children
Use of preventive antimalarial treatments reduces by half the number of malaria infections, among schoolchildren, as well as reducing anaemia, according to a...
HPTN084 study: The promise of HIV prevention injections
The HPTN084 study being conducted in six African countries holds out the promise of a bi-monthly injection for women as an empower new way...
WHO issues rules for testing African herbal remedies against COVID-19
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has agreed rules for the testing of African herbal remedies to fight COVID-19, reports BBC News. Sound science would...
TB and HIV had a modest effect on coronavirus mortality in SA
Preliminary results from a large study COVID-19 patients in South Africa indicate that HIV and TB have a modest effect on mortality, lead scientists Professor...
Why rural South Africans don’t get emergency medical care in time
Drawing on verbal autopsies, a study conducted in Mpumalanga examined what prevented people from seeking, reaching and receiving quality care in a rural part of South...
A worrying drop in antenatal and follow-up visits during lockdown
The COVID-19 pandemic is seen as the cause of patients defaulting on chronic medical and not seeking care. New data points to fears of...
Urgent to strengthen surgical care systems in sub-Saharan Africa
The need to strengthen surgical care systems is especially urgent in sub-Saharan Africa, where access is strikingly limited, leading to the highest mortality and...
UKZN analysis is 'globally most extensive yet' of COVID-19 in a hospital
The University of KwaZulu-Natal's analysis of the COVID-19 outbreak at St Augustine's hospital in Durban, which infected 119 and killed 15, is the most extensive...
Rate of TB recurrence increases almost 9-fold over 13 years in Cape Town
Rates of tuberculosis (TB) recurrence increased by almost nine-fold between episode 2 and 5 regardless of HIV status, according to a study assessing recurrent...
Darunavir/Ritonavir with Rifampicin may be hepatotoxic
Darunavir/ritonavir administered with rifampicin causes hepatotoxicities in people living with HIV, according to results of a study led by researchers at the department of...
Collaboration pushes frontiers of anti-malaria drug regimes
Until malaria is eradicated, drugs are critical to its management. New challenges to the effectiveness of treatments – including drug resistance – have emerged...
A decade of HIV treatment has failed most high-risk young women
A review of HIV incidence among young people in east and southern Africa since antiretroviral treatment (ART) roll-out reveals failures to reach the highest-risk...
Young people receiving HIV treatment in SA increase 10-fold
Results of a study of more than 700,000 one to 19-year olds being treated for HIV infection suggests a ten-fold increase in the number...
Beverage producers' evidence against SA sugar tax was ‘out of context’ and ‘unscrupulous’ — study
Sugar-sweetened beverage producers submitted evidence that was out of context and exaggerated, in their appeal against South Africa’s proposed new sugar levy, Health-e News...
SSA 'test and treat' programmes stumble
Programmes to scale-up HIV testing and treatment in countries in sub-Saharan Africa may have had less impact on new HIV infections than hoped, partly...
Registrar burnout at Wits far exceeds international norms
More than that 80% registrars at the University of the Witwatersrand's School of Clinical Medicine suffer from burnout, a response to prolonged stress,...
SA study links low language ability and poor mental health
A study focusing on language acquisition in Khayelitsha near Cape Town has found that adolescents with low language ability have higher levels of depressive symptoms....
TB clusters show where HIV treatment is missing in South Africa
Clusters of new cases of tuberculosis (TB) provide strong evidence of areas that need to be prioritised for improved antiretroviral therapy (ART) coverage, and...
AI application to predict and diagnose life-threatening diseases
A team of scientists from the University of Johannesburg (UJ), collaborating across theoretical and experimental physics and computer science, have developed and trained a...
Study in KZN community gives policy pointers for fight against TB
A study from the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation & Sequencing Platform (KRISP) and the Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI) provides evidence...