SA’s new AIDS plan falls short on community health workers
By Sasha Stevenson- South Africa’s new National Strategic Plan (NSP) on HIV, TB and STIs will be launched on March 24.
Community health workers: A Spotlight in-depth feature
The role of community health workers in the South African public healthcare system has been unclear and controversial. How many do we need? What exactly should their role be? Who should employ them? What should they be paid? Is there good evidence to inform policy? Sasha Stevenson of SECTION27 lead Spotlight’s in-depth investigation into these pressing questions.
Our health system: Babies are the “canaries in the mine”
If our hospitals were mines they would be declared unsafe. Unfortunately though our canary-babies and their mothers can’t choose not to go into the mine.
Health workers as change agents and patient advocates
My thoughts on health workers as patient advocates stems from my experiences in both spaces – the public sector and civil society.
Sexual and reproductive health rights should matter to all
Why have sexual and reproductive rights remained controversial and contested in Africa? Building on a previous SRHR-focussed Spotlight article by Thuthu Mbatha and Mark Heywood, Tendai Mafuma takes on this difficult question.
Sexual and Reproductive Health Wrongs: What do we need to do to get them right? – An activist perspective: Part 2
Part 1 in the series ends with the statement that we have become complicit with a horrendous status quo. We kick off Part 2 with some suggestions about how we can change this.
Health4Sale: Free State – Multi-million Rand contract delivers dodgy medical equipment
Brand new theatre beds are broken within months and sub-standard anaesthesia machines stand unused following the award of a multi-million Rand medical equipment tender by the Free State Department of Health to a company called Mediquip SA Hub of which two co-directors are George Sebulela, of the Black Business Council and one of the latest additions to the Eskom board, and Tefetso Bernard Phitsane, a senior ANC politician in the Free State and close ally of Ace Magashule.
Health4Sale Part 2: NorthWest pays double for dubious private ambulance service
The North West health department has effectively outsourced the bulk of its emergency medical service to a private ambulance company who is submitting hugely inflated invoices every month with very little appetite by officials to stop the looting.
Spotlight joins the dots in this two-part investigative feature Health4Sale.
State capture threatens the right to health
State capture and corruption casts a long shadow over all spheres of the public service, including healthcare. For our World AIDS Day edition of Spotlight Mark Heywood takes on this difficult topic. We’re publishing this important article online today ahead of its publication in print.
Mental health and pill-taking: Getting beyond HIV
“A few weeks ago we lost Prudence Mbele, a beloved long-time activist living openly with HIV, who died of TB. Prudence was famous for her ‘pill holidays’ – a big no-no in HIV-land, as it leads to further immune damage. The idea of someone stopping their life-saving tablets – even temporarily – boggles the minds of most health providers. Her death triggered an intense media and Facebook/Twitter reaction, filled both with criticism at her choices as well as empathy, as people shared their own hard stories about taking antiretrovirals. Professor Francois Venter writes for Spotlight about the difficulties of taking pills for the rest of your life and dealing with the mental health issues relating to illness.