The stories of health care users experiences with the health system as published by Spotlight are devastating. Various factors play a role when patients’ rights are violated, such as poor planning, inadequate HR management, budget cuts, healthcare worker attitudes, medicine stock-outs, poor policy implementation, and well-intentioned policies that fail to address the rural context.
Every province and district should have an AIDS council. These AIDS councils are supposed to bring everyone (government, organised labour, business, civil society) together to jointly plot our response to HIV, TB and STIs.
A community caregivers project for rural KwaZulu-Natal AIDS orphans and vulnerable children hangs in the balance as donor money from the United States dries up.
While global investment in TB research remains very low at around $726-million in 2016, South Africa does remarkably well on some measures of TB investment when compared to other countries.
One year into his tenure as MEC for Health in the Free State, Butana Khompela is still to exorcise the ghosts that have made the province one of the worst-performing when it comes to health.
The hospital is full. Two young girls lie on trolleys in the main hallway. They are wrapped in pink blankets; drips come out of
their arms and hang on the walls. One looks in severe agony. She calls out for a nurse again and again. heir mother tells
us that they arrived at the hospital seven hours ago and have yet to leave the hallway.
In this issue: A profile of Free State MEC for Health Butana Khompela; A guide to making AIDS councils work; TAC on the state of our hospitals and much more! Download your free copy now.
Whistleblowers say patients with broken legs, arms and other serious orthopaedic conditions are being sent home in the Free State because the buckling health system is simply unable to cope with the numbers. Health workers are told there is no money to bring in outside help to reduce the waiting lists.
For World AIDS Day 2017 we asked a number of experts about the state of the global HIV and TB response. Read answers from Glenda Gray, Peter Piot, Stephen Lewis, Gregg Gonsalves, Linda-Gail Bekker, Anele Yawa, Quarraisha Abdool Karim, Robin Gorna, Tim Tucker and Yogan Pillay.
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.
In 2016, almost 1.7 million people across the globe, and over 120 000 in South Africa, died of TB. We unpack these and other findings from the World Health Organisation’s latest World TB Report.
On Thursday 16 November 2017, Russian president Vladimir Putin told a hall full of health ministers in Moscow that TB is a “serious problem”, and said, “I am confident that the only way we can stand up against this truly global threat is if we join forces.” Did President Putin really mean what he said?