With a new head, there is quiet optimism in some circles that a turnaround in the Free State Department of Health’s fortunes could be on the cards. Masechaba Sesing talked to Spotlight’s Ufrieda Ho about her plans for the department.
Rape Crisis pioneered the first containment counselling service at Cape Town’s inaugural Thuthuzela Care Centre, a model now adopted nationwide. Sue Segar visited staff at the soon to be 50-year-old organisation’s three offices and spoke with a rape survivor who has since become a volunteer at their Khayelitsha branch.
For centuries, it was believed that tuberculosis spread primarily when a vulnerable person spends hours in a poorly ventilated space with someone infectious. But new findings suggest that much TB transmission also occurs through casual contact. Biénne Huisman reports.
People who live near Thusong District Hospital, which closed in 2022, and the Christiana District Hospital, which was destroyed by fire in 2021, told Spotlight’s Nthusang Lefafa they are frustrated over long ambulance wait times, overcrowded clinics, and the high cost of traveling to alternative healthcare facilities
Elzette Rousseau from the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation told attendees at the top HIV conference in The United States about a project taking HIV prevention services to schools in Cape Town. Biénne Huisman visited one of the sites to find out how it works.
A new health research hub brings hope of improving health services in the Rustenburg Valley in the North West Province. Nthusang Lefafa finds out more about how the Bafokeng Health and Demographic Surveillance System Node will work and what it has to offer.
The bodily autonomy of young women and girls is under threat as Gauteng Health and Wellness MEC Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko intends to make the contraceptive implanon compulsory for learners as long as their parents consent. This approach to addressing teenage pregnancy is misguided and unlawful, argues Khuselwa Dyantyi.
Ukwanda, the isiXhosa word for “grow,” encapsulates the mission of Stellenbosch University’s Ukwanda Centre for Rural Health: nurturing healthcare in rural communities. At the centre’s annual community partnership event in Worcester, Sue Segar discovered how future healthcare professionals are stepping up to address the unique challenges of rural populations.
Several opposition politicians and commentators have flagged what appears to be chronic leadership problems at the Gauteng Department of Health. Ufrieda Ho reports.
An extended impasse over a vital agreement for training and improved hospital management between the Gauteng Department of Health and Wits University remains derailed, despite behind the scenes efforts to get it back on track, reports Ufrieda Ho.
Hillbrow started out as Johannesburg’s first health hub in the late 1880s. It’s also been a suburb associated with pimps and prostitution, a middle finger to the Nationalist Party, and a key site of the HIV crisis. Today, it’s the forgotten flatlands of inner city decay … but in small pockets it stays true to its heritage of bringing healthcare to the city’s most overlooked.
A series of robberies at healthcare facilities in the Eastern Cape has disrupted services, with patients sometimes left waiting outside while clinics limit the number of people allowed in. This follows the provincial health department spending over R700 million on security contracts in the past financial year, reports Luvuyo Mehlwana.
