Mafikeng Provincial Hospital, a critical public healthcare facility in the North West, is facing a slew of challenges from broken and faulty medical equipment, long waiting times for surgeries, to chronic shortages of skilled nursing staff. Nthusang Lefafa reports on efforts underway to get the hospital up to scratch.
Over the last decade, there’s been growing evidence that people can have TB without having any symptoms. But there is still much uncertainty over how such asymptomatic TB functions in the body and how infectious it is. An ambitious study, set to be conducted in South Africa and Indonesia, is trying to find some answers. Elri Voigt reports.
South Africa’s health department is overhauling its framework for disability services. It prompts an important question: When it comes to Cerebral Palsy – a wide-ranging motor disorder with possible comorbidities – what could a standardised package of baby care look like, especially within an overburdened public health system? Spotlight explores a collaborative approach in Cape Town aimed at optimising development during the critical first 1 000 days of life.
Mothers and babies in South Africa can easily fall through the cracks and end up going hungry and not getting the healthcare they need. Sue Segar spent time with an innovative project that is helping thousands such women and kids in parts of the Western Cape and Eastern Cape. Their model has been adopted by organisations in several other countries.
Despite the country’s relative wealth, South Africa has shockingly high levels of childhood malnutrition and stunting. Biénne Huisman spends some time with a small team who have made it their business to bring solutions to the table and to get nutritious meals to the kids of farm workers in the Western Cape.
Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town has one of the busiest emergency centres in the Western Cape. As it turns to the public to raise R20 million for the opening of a new emergency centre, Dr Deidre McPherson chats to Biénne Huisman about the hospital’s trauma frontline.
The courts have spoken. The health ombud has issued devastating reports. The Auditor-General has again put damning evidence on the table. Civil society has protested. Yet, the devastating crisis in Gauteng’s health system shows no sign of improvement.
Activists say the Gauteng department of health’s late appeal to a court judgement that compels it to act on cancer treatment backlogs is raising more questions about what the department believes it stands to lose from not doing as the courts have ruled, reports Ufrieda Ho.
Journalist Sue Segar and photographer Thom Pierce recently visited Emalahleni in Mpumalanga to report on how air pollution is impacting the health of people in the area. In part 3 of this Spotlight special series, we zoom in on the science of air pollution and what it does to the human body.
Joshua was safely delivered from Sylvia’s belly instead of her uterus one year ago. Biénne Huisman meets mother and baby, and hears from some of the healthcare professionals involved in the remarkable outcome.
Doctors have blown the whistle about a crisis at one of KwaZulu-Natal’s most important public hospitals, saying it is functioning far under capacity due to a series of crippling cuts. Chris Bateman reports.
In the latest chapter of a long-running legal battle over the Gauteng Department of Health’s obligation to provide people in the province with radiation oncology services, the department has suffered another loss in the courts. Ufrieda Ho assesses the legal situation and asks what it means for people still waiting for the life-saving treatment.
