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Zulu folk music used to encourage heart health
Cardiovascular disease (CVD), the world’s leading cause of mortality, is becoming a major killer of Africans, killing more than 1m people in sub-Saharan Africa...
Major expansion for Umhlanga’s Gateway Private Hospital
New ICU and high-care beds as well as a seventh operating theatre at Busamed Gateway Private Hospital are indications of the growing healthcare demand...
Africa-first pioneering liver transplant machine at Wits
A new R2.7m liver perfusion machine that could save more lives has been introduced at the Wits University Donald Gordon Medical Centre, making it...
Why food alone won’t fix childhood stunting – SA study
South Africa has a paradox when it comes to food availability. Its supermarkets are overflowing, and yet it continues to record high levels of...
Corneal transplant by UFS experts restores student’s sight
A young student who had to drop out of university when his vision was severely affected by keratoconus has regained his sight, thanks to...
Minister promises SA-made generic as LEN rollout begins
South Africa launched the revolutionary anti-HIV Lencapavir with much fanfare last week, with the Health Department announcing plans to expedite the manufacture of the...
South Africa must slash its reliance on imported drugs – Pharmisa
The Health Department’s growing dependence on medicines from outside South Africa is jeopardising local jobs and the country’s security of supply, say pharmaceutical companies...
UCT clinches licence to manufacture medical devices
The South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) has granted a medical device manufacturing licence to the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Biomedical Engineering...
Madhi receives leading global infectious diseases award
Professor Shabir Madhi, Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand, has been named the recipient of the 2026...
Father and daughter volunteer to change lives with cleft surgery
A Cape Town father and daughter recently joined a team of volunteers who helped deliver life-changing corrective surgery to children born with cleft palates...
New NICD chief hits the ground running
In his first month as new executive director of the National Institute of Communicable Diseases – he started on 1 May – Professor Nazir...
Indigenous shrub shows promise for cancer cure
A South African plant may hold the secret to treating cancers that no longer respond to conventional chemotherapy, suggest North-West University researchers, who are...
Life Healthcare boss flags perils of cost-over-quality options
Occupational health standards are waning due to “inexperienced” new players, Life Healthcare CEO Peter Wharton-Hood told Business Day last week, warning that companies are...
Pharmacy council tackles pharmacist shortage
The South African Pharmacy Council (SAPC) has started a process to review the Pharmacy Human Resources Plan for South Africa and tackle shortcomings, including...
HPCSA probes Wits medical programme
Wits University has defended a specialist training programme after a complaint from a trainee doctor, saying it meets national accreditation requirements but conceding that...
Call for justice after forced sterilisations
Government has been slammed for its prevarication and failure to assist the HIV-positive victims of forced and coerced sterilisation, reports The Citizen.
Local NGO Her...
South Africa forges ahead with tech-driven strategy to fight diseases
A new era of artificial intelligence (AI) and other technological and breakthrough innovations will help the country fight HIV, TB and cervical cancer, said...
Medical school bottleneck pushes students overseas
The competition to gain medical school acceptance in South Africa is so fierce that even top-performing matriculants won’t necessarily get in and are being...
Illegal sexual enhancement jabs flagged after organ failure
An alert has been issued by Gauteng Health about the increasing use of unregulated injectable substances marketed for body enhancement and sexual performance, after...
Biovac clinches R5.3bn state vaccine contract
The Biovac Institute has retained a critical three-year contract to supply South Africa with Hexaxim, the six-in-one shot provided to babies and toddlers in...
SA’s ARV programme stagnates in 2025 – new Thembisa estimates
The number of South Africans on antiretroviral treatment remained roughly unchanged from 2024 to 2025, according to new estimates, suggesting that the disruption of...
The woman behind the roll-out of LEN in South Africa
At 18, Pietermaritzburg-born Hasina Subedar was attacked by a man who tried to kill her, losing two fingers and very nearly her life. Afterwards,...
Health data warning for SA employers
South African employers have been warned to tighten up their management of staff health and medical records, in the light of new Protection of...
Unique Cape Town centre focuses on youngsters with kidney disease
Young people with kidney disease in South Africa often fall into the gap between the paediatric and adult healthcare systems, but an innovative clinic...
SA experts baffled by drop in teen pregnancies
Contrary to the norm, the most recent statistics show that teenage pregnancies in the country are reversing their usual trend and actually dropping, leaving...
Diabetes dashboard a step forward for SA
The establishment of South Africa’s national diabetes dashboard signals a major step forward in tackling one of the country’s leading causes of death, writes...
SA surgeon performs Africa’s first lymphatic bypass for Alzheimer’s
A Pretoria surgeon who this month carried out the continent’s first experimental lymphovenous bypass on an Alzheimer’s patient said there had been early signs...
Police boss suspended over controversial health tender
South African police chief General Fannie Masemola, who has denied any role in the controversial R360m health tender awarded to Vusi “Cat” Matlala’s company...
US cuts threaten SA’s LEN rollout – global report
The global Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) has warned that South Africa’s planned rollout of HIV prevention shot lenacapavir (LEN) is being jeopardised by...
SA teen’s leg saved in pioneering surgery with liquid nitrogen
In a South African first, a Centurion surgeon has performed a hip and limb salvage procedure using a liquid nitrogen dipping technique, saving the...
Civil society unites to demand action on national diabetes crisis
Enough is enough, say 24 South African civil society organisations that have united to demand urgent, co-ordinated action on a disease that is now...
Mining giant and nuclear agency in cancer medicine quest
In an innovative partnership, the state-owned South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa) has joined forces with Sibanye-Stillwater, the multinational mining and metals processing group, in...
Ballooning malpractice claims needs alternative approach
Escalating medical malpractice claims against the state – nearly R2bn in 2020/21 – risk collapsing the struggling public healthcare system, and alternatives to traditional...
Data investment key to effective delivery of NHI
Investing in data is arguably the most cost-effective investment South Africa can make to ensure that the NHI delivers equitable, efficient and sustainable healthcare,...
No cardiologists at Livingstone after contracts blunder
For nine critical days – from 1-9 April – Livingstone Hospital in Nelson Mandela Bay had no cardiologists on duty due to an administrative blunder,...
DignitySA launches legal challenge for assisted dying
The non-profit organisation DignitySA filed an application in the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) last week seeking to have the laws that criminalise medically assisted...
Dental accreditation stand-off impacts student training and graduates
Ongoing problems relating to the accreditation of dental students at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) remain unresolved, with the South African Dental...
Transgender patients in SA face 10-year state surgery clinic backlog
South Africa’s only state gender-affirming clinic provides surgery to just four patients a year, while receiving up to 10 new referrals a month –...
Activists push for menstrual Bill for free sanitary products
Civil society and social justice advocates are demanding that Parliament treat menstrual hygiene as a fundamental human right through the proposed Menstrual Health Rights...
South Africa’s smallest surviving baby beats all odds
The parents of a baby born in 2002 – weighing just 410g – were told by doctors it would be best to abort because...