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Talking Points
Copenhagen reveals the secrets of being a healthy city
Maybe it’s the Viking heritage, says a report in The Guardian. There is an icy open-air pool in the waters of Copenhagen’s harbour, and...
Will anyone take the blame and pay the price for Esidimeni?
John Kane-Berman, a policy fellow at the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), writes on the Politicsweb site: “Every time there is a fatality in...
Spotlight on findings in the latest District Health Barometer
A Spotlight report has picked out eight interesting national-level findings in the latest District Health Barometer (DHB), released by the Health Systems Trust last...
Contraception, HIV and control over black women’s bodies
The practice of injecting women with the 'controversial' conraceptive Depo-Provera without proper informed consent – especially those who are poor, black and using the...
Mental health in Africa is 'neglected and stigmatised'
Historically, mental health has been neglected on Africa’s health and development policy agenda, writes Professor Crick Lund, professor and director of the Alan J...
SA’s ‘worst human rights failure since apartheid'
It has been called a tragedy. A calamity. A scandal. But, says a Bhekisisa report, the Life Esidimeni debacle was no accident, no rash...
Abolishing medical tax credit 'problematic' and could face court challenge
As the SA government mulls its options to reduce expenditure while funding priority programmes, experts have warned that the abolishment of the medical tax...
Appearance rather than sporting performance drives steroid use — NHS report
Up to 1m people in the UK are taking anabolic steroids and other image- and performance-enhancing drugs (IPEDs) to change the way they look,...
Lessons for SA to be learned from US/UK tobacco regulations
A shift in the way US and UK policymakers regulate tobacco, e-cigarettes and nicotine could promote public health efforts to reduce smoking and usher...
How the sushi boom is fuelling tapeworm infections
Reports this week that a US man's sushi habit ended with a hospital trip with an almost two-metre tapeworm, has sparked much revulsion and...
Is a 'union style' medical indemnity cover the answer?
A number of SA medical professionals do not have medical indemnity cover due to the rising costs of insurance premiums. Norton Rose Fulbright's Natasha...
The foodie fashion of a gluten-free diet is misplaced
Coeliac disease, an allergy to gluten that causes damage to the intestine, affects only 1% of the population but 11% of Australians follow a...
Why are there still so few women doctors?
“When my friend was in her fourth year of medical school, she and her boyfriend sat down with their dean to discuss their residency...
Doctors in India protest over decision to 'sanction quackery'
Doctors in India have accused the government of seeking to “sanction quackery” by proposing to allow homeopaths and others trained in alternative remedies to...
Algerian men rejecting 'mutilated' breast cancer victims
As if losing a breast to cancer was not traumatic enough, Algerian mother-of-three Linda was then spurned by her husband for being “mutilated” and...
SA's thorny health issues carried over into 2018
As the year begins, it’s common for individuals, companies and government departments to have a few things on their list of things to do....
Sleepless nights over inequitable funding for Gauteng — Health MEC
Gauteng Health MEC Gwen Ramokgopa assumed office in February, and she is quoted in a News24 report as saying that she believes the department’s...
Restricting public comment by psychiatrists on public figures is 'outdated'
The rationale for the Goldwater Rule – which prohibits psychiatrists from publicly commenting on the mental health of public figures they have not examined...
Technology is leaving some doctors out in the cold
The bizarre case of Dr Anna Konopka, a popular rural doctor in the US, who claims to have been barred from practice because she...
SA plan on tobacco shows misplaced zeal – American Vaping Association
A misplaced zeal on the part of SA Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi and activists has caused them to set their sights on products...
Rampant stealing by officials will collapse SA's health system — Heywood
The fact that access to healthcare services is a constitutional right does not mean we should think health is automatically protected, writes Mark Heywood...
The state of the global HIV and TB response as we move to the end of 2017
Great progress, but... An array of academics and activists take a snapshot of the state of the global response to HIV and TB.
“I am...
The pros and cons of intermittent fasting to lose weight
The obesity epidemic has spawned a cottage industry of weight-loss schemes. Currently in vogue is intermittent fasting, which involves alternating intervals of extreme calorie...
Three decades on, stigma still undermines HIV prevention and treatment
There have been great strides and many important victories in the fight against HIV. And, writes Linda-Gail Bekker, professor of medicine and deputy director...
Diagnostic breakthroughs are not halting the rise of TB
The dismal failure of the World Health Organisation-endorsed GeneXpert test to bring TB under control, illustrates a simple fact, according to a Scientific American...
SA's healthcare workers should not be silenced into malpractice
While it is of grave concern that there were many healthcare workers who did not speak out in the course of the Life Esidimeni...
Engaged people and empowered doctors: the real wonder drug
With lifestyle diseases draining more than 55% of healthcare spend in South Africa as a result of chronic conditions, technology should be leveraged to help people...
New SA medical schools, but employment prospects remain uncertain
SA is launching new medical schools but ironically may have no hope of employing all of their graduates, writes Dr Farah Jawitz of the...
Rising healthcare costs: The problem is not doctors and hospitals
The most important cause of high SA healthcare costs is, the rapidly increasing use of services by medical scheme members, not the prices charged...
Almost 60% of US doctors have encountered patient bigotry
Most doctors have absorbed racist, sexist, and other bigoted verbal remarks from patients under their care, according to a US national survey. And, reports...
Women in science ask fewer conference questions than men
Stereotypes suggest that women love to talk, with some studies even finding that women say three times as much as men. But, research from...
Outrage over 'disinterested' Mugabe's WHO appointment justified — columnist
Typhoid and cholera are never far from the headlines in Zimbabwe, writes Dianna Games, CEO of Africa @ Work in a Business Day column. She...
Mugabe's brief appointment as WHO ambassador may have been quid pro quo
Kerry Cullinan, managing editor of Health-e News writes that she has been trying to understand why World Health Organisation (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus...
UK refuses inquiry into a 'health scandal worse than thalidomide'
The UK government has refused to hold a public inquiry into the use of vaginal mesh implants which medical experts have described as a...
Sugar tax is not the only solution to SA's obesity crisis
Obesity threatens us with an alarming and bizarre statistic: within the next four years the number of obese people on the planet could outnumber...
Nerve stimulation restores some consciousness after 15 years of PVS
A 35-year-old man who had been in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) for 15 years has shown signs of consciousness after receiving a pioneering...
Be wary of medical messiahs with promises of salvation
Scientific pioneer, superstar surgeon, miracle worker – that’s how Paolo Macchiarini was known for several years. Dressed in a white lab coat or in...
‘Oversight failures and greed’ drive SA’s medical litigation explosion
SA public sector medical malpractice claims often stem from 'failures of management and oversight of clinical care, while the in the private sector, greed...
Regulation 8: An access guarantee or a blank cheque?
It is time to curb excessive costs, before it kills both the private health sector and the country’s medical schemes, writes Susan Erasmus on Fin24....
Health Department: 'Innuendo? What innuendo?'
The National Department of Health has defended a She Conquers campaign billboard next to the N1 in Johannesburg after accusations that it contained sexual...