World TB Day is marked in the same week that South Africa celebrates Human Rights Day. A human rights based approach to TB mirrors a public health approach, argue Ingrid Schoeman, Sasha Stevenson, Janet Giddy, Renier Coetzee, and Petula Pienaar.
A massive and long-awaited study of an experimental tuberculosis vaccine has kicked off in South Africa. Marcus Low reports.
Tuberculosis can infect anyone. It is caused by bacteria and spreads through air and is very common in South Africa. Dr Janet Giddy shares how she deals with Mrs Worried – an anxious and fearful voice seeking advice when someone close to her, like her domestic worker, has been diagnosed with TB.
Research into the link between disordered sleep and disease show an outsized burden on the most vulnerable. It’s sounding alarms for sleep equity to have a place on the public health agenda, reports Ufrieda Ho.
Obesity is a public health crisis in South Africa, similar to HIV in the late 1990s, Dr Nomathemba Chandiwana tells Spotlight on the sidelines of the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in Denver, Colorado. She also presented research that found lifestyle behaviour changes had a limited effect on reversing weight gain in people living with HIV.
While three new tuberculosis (TB) medicines have been registered in South Africa over the last decade, TB treatment still comes with several side effects and requires taking multiple different medicines, typically for six or more months. The search for better TB medicines got a boost last week with the presentation of promising findings from a study conducted in South Africa on an experimental drug called quabodepistat. Elri Voigt reports on this and other TB studies presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in Denver, Colorado.
Non-communicable diseases are killing more and more people in South Africa yet the government missed out on raising a total of more than R15 billion for prevention efforts, argues Dr Evelyn Thsehla.
The proportion of South Africans consuming marijuana, cocaine and heroin has increased substantially since the early 2000s, research shows. Jesse Copelyn breaks down the reasons for these trends and potential solutions to the problem.
Spotlight visits Rahima Moosa Mother and Child Hospital and sees progress for the struggling hospital but also the reality that there’s a long road ahead to undo what a health ombud report suggests has been years of neglect and poor management.
Mortuaries are grim places, yet Professor Lorna Martin – South Africa’s first woman to head a forensic medicine department – also visits mortuaries when she is on holiday. She was born in Newcastle in the United Kingdom and matriculated at a school in Boksburg on Gauteng’s East Rand. Martin, who has wispy hair and eyes with a glint of steel, spoke to Biénne Huisman about her career working on headline-catching cases and the nearly-R300 million Observatory Forensic Pathology Institute in Cape Town.
There are significant gaps in the data when it comes to understanding South Africa’s cancer burden. Things are however set to improve with an initiative that will allow members of the public to assist in data gathering. Elri Voigt reports on a new patient-led cancer registry that will feed into South Africa’s existing National Cancer Registry.
With the remarkable success of antiretroviral treatment people living with HIV in South Africa are generally living much longer than they did two decades ago. As a result, more people with HIV are also now living with non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as diabetes and hypertension. Accordingly, the need to better integrate HIV and NCD services was a hot topic at the recent Southern African HIV Clinicians Society conference in Cape Town. Elri Voigt reports.