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Talking Points
Why Omicron doesnʼt need its own custom COVID vaccine
In South Africa, where as many as 70% to 80% of the population has been infected, and 40% vaccinated, it’s possible many people now...
Crisp: DoH wants ‘less passivity’ from govt departments over vaccinations
While the national Department of Health had not “de-prioritised” the vaccination program, some government departments were “more passive than we’d like”, acting Director-General Nicholas...
Medical school admissions: ‘SAMA slaps on a bandage while avoiding the wound’
The fall-out from comments on CapeTalk by former SA Medical Association chair Dr Angelique Coetzee about medical school entrance requirements has confounded many, writes...
NYT article on prenatal DNA testing full of ‘blunders and inaccuracies’
An article in The New York Times that focused on the supposedly flawed nature of prenatal DNA testing was full of inaccuracies, writes Ellen...
Tembisa 10: Evidence remains absent, questions unanswered
Last year South Africans briefly celebrated a Guinness World Record birth, when 10 babies were supposedly born to Gosiame Sithole at Tembisa Hospital. Journalist...
Antarctic find fuels theory of accidental COVID leak from research lab
The controversial theory that COVID-19 accidentally leaked from a Chinese laboratory was given fresh momentum after scientists studying soil samples in Antarctica stumbled upon...
Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine: Did nationalism cost the lives of hundreds of thousands?
Sidelined in the European Union, never approved in the United States, dumped by South Africa, and now barely used in the United Kingdom, the...
Super poo: The emerging science of stool transplants and designer gut bacteria
As more people turn to faecal transplants for their health benefits, researchers are harnessing the power of high-quality poo in new treatments that can...
South African government’s new pragmatism over COVID restrictions
The South African government’s recent easing of its COVID regulations mark a significant departure in the way forward, a pragmatic approach that balances the...
International sport and COVID restrictions: The Novak Djokovic saga
The saga around tennis ace Novak Djokovic attempts to defend his title in the Australian Open highlights the thorny issue of reconciling strict national...
Science under attack in UK for ‘apocalyptic’ COVID-19 claims
Top scientists have come under attack in the United Kingdom for “apocalyptic” COVID-19 claims and “dodgy data” that The Telegraph says have undermined faith...
South Africa’s fixation on Western science worsened its COVID crisis
Now, and in the past, “following the science” on COVID-19 has landed South Africa in trouble. This is not an indictment of science, but...
Lessels says KZN sequencing team was in a Catch-22 situation
Dr Richard Lessels, of the now-globally famous KwaZulu-Natal Research and Innovation Sequencing Platform (KRISP), whose genome sequencing team alerted the world to the now-rampant...
Africa now has the shots but is struggling to administer them
After initially struggling to get vaccine supplies because of hoarding by the developed nations, the problem for Africa is now one of logistics and...
China cements medical partnerships, donates a billion vaccines
President Xi Jinping has announced that China will provide one billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to Africa. Only 7% – about 96 million – of...
Vaccine rollout: SA government has made three mistakes
The South African government has made three critical mistakes in its rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, write University of Cape Town’s Prof Nicoli Nattrass and...
Omicron: Some simple steps to deal with the new variant
Rather than outrage over travel bans, the South African government should concentrate on executing a short list of Do’s and Don’ts to deal with...
DoH’s ‘reckless’ failure to place junior doctors aggravates medical emigration
The Junior Doctors Association of SA says that foreign medical recruiters are actively recruiting South African doctors for Ireland, Canada and Australia, and the...
COVID head-scratcher: Why are head lice thriving despite physical distancing?
In theory, lice are harder to spread than the SARS-CoV-2 virus because proximity alone isnʼt enough, writes Kaiser Health News. Yet, in the US,...
From Sydney to Vienna: Restricting the unvaccinated underclass
Across the world a new crackdown is gaining pace, write The Telegraph and The New York Times. It's not about mask wearing or universal restrictions...
Spotlight investigation: Gqeberha patients must endure soiled linen
While the provision of clean linen is a widespread problem in Nelson Mandela Bay hospitals, at Livingstone Hospital it’s reached “nightmare” proportions, with patients...
Religion squeezes out medicine as Taliban take control of Afghan hospitals
In the face of medical staff work unpaid, as well as critical shortages of medicine, fuel and food, the Taliban-appointed supervisor of small district...
16 years and R2.1bn later, Kimberley Mental Health Hospital remains barely used
After 16-years under construction and R2.bn in costs, the Kimberley Mental Health Hospital, described by the Northern Cape premier as “a monument to corruption”...
100% COVID vaccination rate is possible without coercion or incentives
The Indian district of Raigarh (population 1.6m) has achieved 100% first-dose vaccination of all eligible citizens, without financial incentives or a governmental mandate, writes...
As COVAX disappoints, developing countries turn to home-grown jabs
Low- and middle-income countries are turning to home-grown vaccinations against COVID-19 as the UN-backed COVAX facility fails to deliver, reports SciDev.Net.
From Egypt to Brazil,...
COVID lessons from a contrarian Sweden
Throughout the pandemic, Sweden took its own path by keeping businesses open and most children in classrooms while other countries were locking down, writes...
How to minimise the negative effects of Nigeria’s incessant strikes by doctors
Doctors’ strikes, such as those occurring regularly in Nigeria, tend to be met with public outcry and appeals for them to abide by their...
Political will: The vaccine against Big Tobacco in Africa
There is overwhelming evidence against tobacco, dating back decades, that we already have instruments to fight it in place – we just need the...
Activists: “Sugar tax is working and should be increased’
The Healthy Living Alliance (Heala) has repeated its call for the Treasury to enact its initial proposal of a 20% health promotion levy on...
Long COVID is ‘exaggerated’ and ‘overblown’
Despite a number of studies pointing to the persistence of COVID symptoms in large numbers of those who have recovered from the infection, another...
British GPs and practice staff quitting over face-to-face appointments
Senior doctors in Britain have warned that practice staff and GPs are quitting after an unprecedented wave of abuse from patients and weeks of...
COVID1-9 pandemic is the deadliest event in US history
The COVID-19 pandemic is the deadliest event in American history, with its death toll of 703,000 people surpassing that of the Civil War (620,000)...
Tanzania discards prayer and herbal concoctions in favour of vaccines
With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Tanzania’s president and health minister, rejected vaccines in favour of prayer and “natural remedies”. With the demise...
Portugal’s military key to making it the world’s most vaccinated country
Portugal is the most vaccinated country in the world with about 85% of the population fully vaccinated against COVID-19 in just nine months, and...
Public health in Africa: Neglect, dependency and now a ‘moral tragedy’
Public health in Africa has been a story of neglect and dependency, says Dr John Nkengasong, the first director of the Africa Centers for...
PANDA’s ‘misleading and pseudoscientific’ claims drive vaccine hesitancy
Actuary Nick Hudson heads PANDA, the most high-profile group driving vaccine hesitancy in South Africa, writes Nathan Geffen, editor of GroundUp. It’s been spreading...
Denmark scraps all restrictions, thanks to a COVID ‘super-weapon’
For Danes, COVID-19 is officially over. Last Friday (10 September), the country lifted all of its last pandemic restrictions, with the government having declared...
Traditional medicine ‘needs equal funding to tackle COVID’
There is an urgent need to institutionalise traditional medicine, not just to tolerate it but to give it an equal chance and research funding...
Study identifies 579 genetic locations linked to anti-social behaviour, addiction
An analysis of data from 1.5 million people has identified 579 locations in the genome associated with a predisposition to behaviours and disorders related...
Oxford Vaccine Group: Delta renders herd immunity ‘mythical’
Reaching herd immunity is “not a possibility” with the current Delta variant, says the head of Britain's Oxford Vaccine Group in a report in The...