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Talking Points
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Restricting public comment by psychiatrists on public figures is 'outdated'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...
Fury from LGBT rights groups over facial recognition study
A facial recognition experiment that claims to be able to distinguish between gay and heterosexual people has sparked a row between its creators and...
Indian doctors hurl abuse at each other in operating theatre
Two doctors have been caught on video hurling abuse at each other inside an Indian operating theatre as they conducted an emergency C-section which...
NICE guidelines on endometriosis: Diagnosis will improve, treatment won't
The UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s new guidelines on endometriosis will be transformative in enabling women to circumvent years of unnecessary suffering, writes...
SA challenged to face 'hard truths' on drug abuse prejudices – Global Commission
South Africa has taken a lead in the HIV response, but HIV won’t be overcome until the country faces some hard truths about drug...
New studies show critical impact of behaviour on dementia risk
17A wealth of new data, assembled in a Lancet Commission report, suggests that behaviour can have a significant impact on the risk of getting...
Disembowelling SA's private healthcare system
"Health tourism" by African leaders has been criticised by South Africa’s health minister. While the self-serving hypocrisy of leaders who have destroyed their countries’...
Uptake of healthcare mediation is slow, but Gauteng Health launches pilot project
Although the take up of healthcare mediation has been slow, the SA Medico-Legal Association (Samla) has announced that Gauteng Health will go ahead with a proposal...
Claims that sugar as addictive as cocaine described as 'absurd'
A review in the British Journal of Sports Medicine suggesting that sugar should be considered an addictive substance, and could even be on a...
Concerns that the NHI could be 'captured' by powerful vested interests
The shaping of SA's proposed National Health Insurance will be dominated by powerful groups with vested interests in health care: the corporate private sector, technocrats, and...
Pill fatigue, dating and mental health when HIV+
Professor Francois Venter, the deputy executive director, at the Wits Institute for Sexual & Reproductive Health HIV and Related Diseases writes in Spotlight on...
Gene-edited piglets opening door to animal organ transplants
In a striking advance that helps open the door to organ transplants from animals, researchers have created gene-edited piglets cleansed of viruses that might...
NHS ends funding of homeopathic and herbal medicines
Homeopathic and herbal remedies will no longer be funded under the British National Health Service because they are a 'misuse of scarce funds' University...
The death of Charlie Gard leaves a legacy of thorny questions
Charlie Gard, the incurably ill British infant who died recently, could not hear, see or even cry. But, reports The New York Times, his...
The ‘clean eating’ movement is 'ugly, malevolent and damaging'
At best, the "clean eating" fad is nonsense dressed up as health advice, writes a British eating disorder expert Dr Max Pemberton in an...
Controversial movement raises questions about treatment of those 'hearing voices'
A growing but controversial international movement raises fundamental questions about what it means to be mentally ill, reports StatNews. The question at the heart...