Health and Unrest: NHLS and medicines distribution impacted
This week’s unrest in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng has disrupted both medicines distribution and laboratory services. Thabo Molelekwa reports.
OPINION: The long and painful road to the Life Esidimeni inquest
Although individual families of the mental healthcare users who died after they were discharged from Life Esidimeni in 2016 have been compensated for the violation of their constitutional rights, the actors responsible for the deaths, suffering, and torture of the mental healthcare patients have yet to be held criminally accountable. But that could change after a formal Judicial Inquest into the deaths, starting at the Pretoria High Court on 19 July 2021.
Old struggles persist for CHWs in Free State
Seven years after over 100 community health workers were arrested during a vigil at the provincial health department’s headquarters, Bophelo House, the struggles of community healthcare workers in the Free State continue as they are still calling for job security. Refilwe Mochoari reports.
OPINION: Excluding foreign nationals undermines the vaccine rollout
Refugees, asylum seekers, migrants, and undocumented people are estimated to make up around 4 million of the people living in South Africa. That is nearly 7% of the country’s total population yet there is still no clarity on the process to register and vaccinate undocumented people.
Opinion: Amidst the pandemic, health facility quality ratings give a false sense of security.
Health facility assessments are crucial to ensure patients’ needs for care are met, but often these assessments become a box-ticking exercise the country can ill afford, writes René Sparks.
Six years after Life Esidimeni: Deinstitutionalisation at risk as NGOs are paid late
Six years after the Life Esidimeni tragedy, an inquest into the circumstances under which more than a thousand psychiatric patients were moved into the care of NGOs and about 144 died, is set to start in the North Gauteng High Court in July. Meanwhile, some mental health NGOs and activists maintain that the Gauteng Department of Health is still short-changing mental health services. Thabo Molelekwa reports.
Bullying in healthcare: What is behind the worrying numbers?
Around 58% of staff at a local university’s health science faculty, including those jointly working in public hospitals, report having been bullied more than once. Elna Schütz spoke to medical practitioners and experts about the prevalence and impact of bullying, and other toxic workplace conditions on health workers’ mental health and patient care.
What is behind Gauteng’s shocking serious adverse event numbers?
Rates of Serious Adverse Events that result in unintended harm to patients are disturbingly high in Gauteng public hospitals. Thabo Molelekwa spoke to health activists and government to see what is at the root of these risks to patient safety and what is done to curb it.
In Focus: What the Charlotte Maxeke fire tells us about health and safety in Gauteng hospitals
As Charlotte Maxeke Hospital missed its date to reopen this month after a fire in April, there are concerns that the true cost of the fire is still to be counted and that the fire is just another indication of a health department and fire service in crisis. Ufrieda Ho reports
OPINION: Court again steps into the gap left by the legislature on medico-legal claims
Medico-legal claims in the public healthcare sector have been sharply increasing since at least 2014 and are taking huge bites out of already stretched provincial budgets. Motheo Brodie and Sasha Stevenson of SECTION27 assess what impact a recent court judgment and proposed legislation might have on the problem.
Unidentified bodies in Gauteng: How the system works and plans to improve it
Last year there were over a thousand unidentified and unclaimed bodies in Gauteng mortuaries. Thabo Molelekwa asked health authorities in Gauteng about plans to address this backlog.
Oral Health: Dire shortage of dental practitioners in public sector
Oral health is critical to people’s overall health, but a dire shortage of oral health practitioners in the public health sector means that many people are not getting the oral healthcare services they need. Luvuyo Mehlwana spoke to health officials and oral health experts about the state of oral health services in the country.