For the past 128 years, a hospital tucked away on what was once a rural farm in Johannesburg East has been fighting to turn the tables on a disease that has plagued humankind for millennia. Ufrieda Ho has the latest in Spotlight’s special series of ‘Hospital Histories’.
For decades, Professor Heather Zar has been at the cutting edge of research into the health of children in South Africa. Last month she received the European Respiratory Society’s lifetime achievement award in paediatrics. Biénne Huisman chatted to Zar about her career, the remarkable Drakenstein Child Health Study, and the urgent need to ensure access to new RSV vaccines in Africa.
A pivotal case for access to affordable medicines in South Africa is set to determine whether people in South Africa will be able to get access to breakthrough cystic fibrosis treatments. Aneesa Adams spent some time with a family living with cystic fibrosis to get a sense of what is at stake.
A new report from the Lancet Commission on Tuberculosis (TB) titled ‘Scientific advances and the end of tuberculosis’ makes several recommendations for how governments should go about fighting the deadly, but curable, disease. Spotlight editor Marcus Low puts the Spotlight on how South Africa’s TB programme is measuring up against the recommendations.
That some people are being denied healthcare services because they do not have identity documents or transfer letters is one of the headline findings of community-led clinic monitoring project Ritshidze’s third report on healthcare services in the Eastern Cape. Luvuyo Mehlwana reports.
In June, the Gauteng government launched a major employment drive called Nasi iSpani. Thabo Molelekwa spoke to stakeholders in the public health sector about what this may mean for the province’s chronic healthcare worker shortages.
The second United Nations High-Level Meeting on Tuberculosis is taking place in New York today. Sihle Mahonga Ndawonde argues that better TB data and more transparency are needed in South Africa if we are to get and stay on the road to meeting the ambitious targets set and endorsed at this UN meeting.
South Africa faces chronic healthcare worker shortages and the country’s Human Resources for Health Strategy 2030 has warned of an impending healthcare worker crisis. The shortages are particularly acute in some rural areas. One part of the solution that was the talk of the recently held Rural Health Conference, is to employ more clinical associates. Tiyese Jeranji reports.
Professor Valerie Mizrahi, a world-leading tuberculosis researcher and director of the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine at the University of Cape Town, is retiring at the end of the year. Biénne Huisman sat down with Mizrahi to talk about her journey in TB research, passing the baton to a new generation of researchers, and how she helped build a research ecosystem that brings together specialists across the basic, clinical, and public health sciences.
The National Treasury’s Cost Containment Letter sent to government departments instructing, among others, the freezing of posts was one of the big themes underlying talks about building South Africa’s healthcare worker capacity at the Public Health Association of South Africa’s conference held recently in Gqeberha. Luvuyo Mehlwana reports.
As of last year, there were 3 449 people waiting on orthopaedic surgery in five of South Africa’s nine provinces. Waiting times in these five provinces ranged from two weeks to over five years. In the Eastern Cape, it can take up to ten years for people to get specific types of orthopaedic surgery. Tiyese Jeranji looks at the numbers and unpacks what it means for healthcare workers and people waiting for orthopaedic surgery.
The latest report published by community-led clinic monitoring group Ritshidze shows that the Free State is the worst-performing province in South Africa when it comes to giving people enough antiretrovirals to last several months at a time. This means people living with HIV in the province have to go collect their medicines more frequently than people in other provinces. Refilwe Mochoari reports.