Meeting the challenge of an increasing cancer burden is only possible if there is political will to bridge the gap between our cancer policy documents and the reality faced by thousands of cancer patients in the health system writes Professors Jeannette Parkes and Lydia Cairncross.
Four provinces have made positive moves to announce that patients on chronic medicines will be able to have their scripts filled for as long as three or four months in order to minimise their exposure to possible COVID-19 infection in public spaces like clinics.
South Africa’s strategy to defeat COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019) is to lockdown the country and upscale testing to quickly identify individuals who may have been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
As the major social and economic disruption that will be caused by South Africa’s COVID-19 lockdown becomes apparent, civil society organisations caution that issues affecting the poor and marginalised could fall through the cracks.
While public health experts welcome the lockdown as “the right thing to do”, some warn that a lockdown alone is not the silver bullet.
People living with mental illness are among the most vulnerable people in society and face widespread stigma. In our response to COVID-19, we must be sensitive to the needs of this group of people, writes Julia Chaskalson.
The decision to institute a lockdown is evidence of a government taking both scientific evidence and the need to save lives seriously and then taking carefully considered action, writes Marcus Low.
Around 10 million people get sick with TB every year. On World TB Day Amy Green asks what COVID-19 means for this group of people.
Medicines that taste like strawberries or mangos, cutting edge trials on preventing TB in kids, measuring how children’s bodies take up TB medicines – in this World TB Day feature Kathryn Cleary profiles the amazing research done by the Desmond Tutu TB Centre in Cape Town.
Eight days ago President Cyril Ramaphosa declared a national state of disaster. Spotlight looks back at the last week and listens to what community groups, farm workers, taxi operators and others have to say about COVID-19 and the various measures to prevent or slow its spread.
We are a world and a nation at war and if we don’t respond accordingly, we will suffer serious casualties – infrastructure, jobs, economic growth, food security, social cohesion and life itself, writes a team of public health doctors as they call on all South Africans to join them as they pledge to put the ‘(YO)U back into UBUNTU’.
People living with HIV and other chronic conditions should be urgently supported to reduce contact with health facilities both for “social distancing” purposes as well as saving healthcare worker capacity for those with the greatest immediate need, argues Lynne Wilkinson and Anna Grimsrud.