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Talking Points
Research turns to potential affect of COVID vaccines on menstrual cycle
While many of the side effects of a COVID vaccine are known and well publicised, thousands in the US think that they may have...
WHO’s vaccine head on why the rush for COVID booster jabs is premature
When the World Health Organization (WHO) recently called for a moratorium on giving COVID-19 booster shots except in rare circumstances, it cited vaccine inequity...
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...
Unpacking COVID vaccination's effect on fertility and sexual functioning
Rumours and myths about the COVID-19 vaccine effects on reproduction and sexual functioning have spread across social media platforms, where people swop rumours of...
Biden administration wants boosters for most people 8 months after vaccination
US President Joe Biden's administration has decided that most Americans should get a coronavirus booster vaccination eight months after they received their second shot,...
Cubaʼs health system in acute distress as COVID cases soar
Cubaʼs health care system, long a source of national pride, is in acute distress, writes The New York Times.
After fending off COVID-19 last year,...
Scientists fumble for explanations as breakthrough infections rise
Medical scientists are struggling to pin down the reasons for the surprisingly high number of vaccinated people who are getting breakthrough COVID-19 infections, writes...
SAMJ: Vaccine hesitancy has little to with the rantings of a cardiac surgeon
The media, both social and otherwise, has been full of the irresponsible rantings of a well-known health professional against the COVID-19 vaccination in the...
Only Africa’s leaders can staunch Africa’s medical brain drain
Despite international interventions to staunch Africa's long existing medical brain drain, the key issue is that the continent’s leaders will have to exercise strong...
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...
Research turns to potential affect of COVID vaccines on menstrual cycle
While many of the side effects of a COVID vaccine are known and well publicised, thousands in the US think that they may have...
WHO’s vaccine head on why the rush for COVID booster jabs is premature
When the World Health Organization (WHO) recently called for a moratorium on giving COVID-19 booster shots except in rare circumstances, it cited vaccine inequity...
COVID-19 herd immunity. It’s not going to happen, so what next?
Herd immunity is no longer a discussion the world should be having, writes Professor Shabir A Madhi of the University of the Witwatersrand in...
CDC warns: Delta more transmissible than Ebola, as contagious as chickenpox
The Delta variant is more transmissible than Ebola and as infectious as chickenpox, warns the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, writes MedicalBrief....
Realisation that COVID will be ‘a long warʼ sparks anger and denial
The prospect of a prolonged COVID-19 outbreak and constantly evolving roster of restrictions has brought back another feature of pandemic living — anger —...
COVID-19 in children: The South African experience and way forward
Surveillance data in South Africa indicate that the lower risk of COVID-19 infection, disease, death or transmission experienced by children is age-dependent – and...
Zimbabwe plays political roulette with vaccines
Despite a failing COVID-19 programme forcing the Zimbabwean government to allow private hospitals and clinics in infection hotspots to vaccinate, it insists the country...
The long and painful road to the Life Esidimeni inquest
On Monday an inquest began into the deaths of 144 mental health patients after they were discharged from Life Esidimeni into communities more than...
Asia’s COVID tsunami threatens to engulf the Olympic Games
Once envied for their ability to contain the spread of COVID-19, many Asian countries are now battling new strains of the coronavirus and case...
The long, slow collapse of South Africa’s top hospitals
Professor Daynia Ballot, head of Clinical Medicine at the University of the Witwatersrand, has three decades of experience working in hospitals in Gauteng. Writing...
Ivermectin is not a ‘miracle drug’ against COVID. Vaccines are
Ivermectin may well prove to be useful in the battle against COVID-19 but it’s no “miracle drug”, write Claire Berlinski and Yuri Deigin in...
Fourfold more US soldiers commit suicide than die in combat
Since 9/11, four times as many United States service members and veterans have died by suicide than have been killed in combat, reports NBC...
Benefits of mix-and-match approach to COVID-19 vaccines
There are a number of potential advantages to a mix-and-match approach to vaccination against COVID-19, writes Maureen Ferran, Associate Professor of Biology at Rochester...
Obesity paradox gets new support – Ventilator-associated pneumonia study
Against expectations, French researchers have found obese hospitalised patients were at no greater risk for ventilator-associated pneumonia than those of normal weight, writes John...
COVID jabs for billions of humans will earn their makers billions of dollars
Drug-makers led by United States firms Pfizer and Moderna stand to make tens of billions of dollars from their COVID-19 vaccines this year and...
COVID-19 in children: No room for complacency
The most probable outcome of COVID-19 in children is, a complete and uncomplicated recovery. But the calculus of risk changes drastically when considered from...
Health tourism by Africa's leaders costs their countries dearly
Many of Africa's leaders have neglected the health care needs of their people, while selfishly finding treatment for themselves and their families abroad, writes...
HPCSA"s presentation on medical schemes’ role in NHI was 'incoherent'
The presentation by the Health Professions Council of SA’s Professor Mbulaheni Nemutandani before last week's Health Portfolio Committee, in which the HPCSA called for...
The WHO and tobacco policy – A seven-point reform agenda
The tobacco policies and actions of the World Health Organization are in urgent need of reform, if the United Nations’ global health agency is...
What really happened in the Charlotte Maxeke Hospital fire
When the Charlotte Maxeke fire caused the evacuation of 700 patients and the destruction of an estimated R40m in hospital supplies, Gauteng Health denied...
Keep a particularly hot spot in Hell for health tenderpreneurs
State looting has been disastrous for South Africa in many ways, both practical and philosophical, writes William Saunderson-Meyer in the Jaundiced Eye column. But...
A bitter dispute over SA's vaccine secrecy
Some of South Africa’s most respected and influential scientists have been engaged for weeks in a bitter dispute in the SA Medical Journal over...
A bitter dispute over SA's vaccine secrecy
Some of South Africa’s most respected and influential scientists have been engaged for weeks in a bitter dispute in the SA Medical Journal over...
Academics dismiss MAC-Vac head Schoub's angry SAMJ editorial as a 'distraction'
The dispute between leading scientists in academia and the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Vaccines' Prof Barry Schoub, continued this week in the SA Medical...
Opera singing is helping long-haul COVID patients to recover
ENO Breathe is a pilot breathing and well-being programme for people recovering from COVID-19 but still suffering from breathlessness and anxiety, deevloped in partnership...
SA's alcohol bans were not 'not based on credible science'
Research challenging the conventional wisdom over the South African government's alcohol bans has been met with “spittle-flecked fury” from the anti-alcohol establishment, writes Peter...
MAC vaccine chair slams critics who 'disparage' the DoH
Professor Barry Schoub has in a strongly worded SA Medical Journal editorial criticised other experts who said the country should have gone ahead with...
Sweden's COVID-19 experiment has divided the world
The world is divided about the Swedish “light touch” approach to COVID-19, seeing it either a a triumph of good sense or disastrous misstep,...
Vaccination successes mustn't overshadow the massive failures — Peter Piot
In the first wave of COVID-19, the mortality rate in a London hospital was roughly the same as that from Ebola in West Africa...