For years, hospitals have relied on the unpaid, unprotected labour of trainee-specialists to fill their rosters, but these doctors are reaching a breaking point. Joan van Dyk reports.
As a young doctor working in rural KwaZulu-Natal, Hennie Hamilton lived with a Zulu family for four years, an experience which, he says, changed him forever. Twenty-three years later, he’s still working in the area as medical manager at Mosvold Hospital and doing cataract surgery on patients from five rural hospitals.
In a country like South Africa which grapples with a high prevalence of gender-based violence, forensic nursing unfortunately remains a largely overlooked specialisation, with little incentive for remuneration. One nurse tells Elna Schütz every flicker of hope a patient carries home is a reminder of why she chose this path.
From counselling about small nodules to overcoming people’s fears of needles, Biénne Huisman takes the pulse of a new HIV prevention injection’s rollout in the Western Cape.
With glimmers of tenderness beneath a stoic façade, Tara Gerardy-Bissolati tells Biénne Huisman about her struggle to beat opioids, why homelessness is a public health issue, and her commitment to bring hope to people living rough in central Cape Town.
Long before she became a pioneering scientist, Professor Liesl Zühlke insisted on seeing her tonsils after they were removed when she was just five years old. Today, paediatric cardiology is close to her heart, and her research has helped answer critical questions in the entire pipeline of heart disease.
High-octane executive force Marlene le Roux tells Biénne Huisman about contracting polio when she was three months old, about not dimming her light, and renovations that made the Artscape Theatre Centre in Cape Town one of South Africa’s most accessible public spaces.
Dr Hermann Reuter did pioneering work treating HIV in the early 2000s in Cape Town and in the rural Eastern Cape. Today, his focus is substance abuse, which he believes is the country’s biggest health issue after HIV. Sue Segar spent time with him to learn about his work in the Garden Route city of George.
An NGO offers safe, private HIV services to Men who Have Sex with Men and transgender people in George. Sue Segar met with some of the people using these services, and found the NGO, TB HIV Care are already providing relief from the hostile reactions trans people sometimes experience in government clinics.
Dr Andrew Ross’s idea of sponsoring rural students to study for careers in healthcare has succeeded beyond his dreams. Sue Segar sat down with him and chatted to the four students who bagged the initial fully funded scholarships and who went on to land senior roles in public health.
A survey of 49 000 teenagers in the Western Cape reminds us that preventing violence does not begin in a hospital, a police station or a courtroom. It begins much earlier, in families, schools, sports fields, faith communities and neighbourhoods, writes Western Cape Provincial Minister of Health and Wellness Mireille Wenger.
The fire that engulfed parts of Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital was never just a fire, it was a warning, argue Dr Haseena Majid and Professor Mogie Subban. Five years later, the real question they say is whether South Africa is prepared to listen.