As the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in KwaZulu-Natal increases, provincial health authorities, health practitioners and public health activists urge residents to avoid the spread of misinformation fuelling stigma around COVID-19. Nomfundo Xolo investigates.
The two Netcare private hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal hardest hit by COVID-19 outbreaks, reopened this week with lessons that there’s no room to drop the ball when it comes to infection control. UFRIEDA HO reports.
Two provinces have said they will force people with COVID-19 to isolate in state facilities irrespective of whether they can safely self-isolate at home. Kathryn Cleary investigates the legal and public health side of these decisions.
Last year KwaZulu-Natal celebrated three districts’ achievement of the UNAIDS 90-90-90 targets. But celebrations may have been premature, as new data shows that no district in KZN in fact met the targets. Spotlight visited one of the districts to investigate.
Alarming statistics put KwaZulu-Natal at the forefront of South Africa’s child hunger crisis, with around two to four times the reported levels in other provinces. Spotlight visited one of the province’s most rural districts to find the children at the heart of these numbers and the organisations making a difference.
The KwaZulu-Natal Department of Health has again been taken to task on poor contract management and allegations of tender irregularities – this time by the Public Protector.
The last time medical waste services in KwaZulu-Natal were delivered in terms of a standard non-extended, tender was 2003. With the cancelation of a recently advertised tender this highly irregular situation seems set to continue well into 2020.
Each of South Africa’s nine provinces is supposed to have an HIV and TB plan that guides provincial implementation of the National Strategic Plan. Here’s Spotlight’s analysis of KwaZulu-Natal’s plan.
OPINION: The first few days of March 2019 must have been a time of great uncertainty for migrants in South Africa in need of health care services. Circulars by the Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal health departments said that all non-South Africans, other than refugees, would from now on have to pay in full for all health care services at public clinics and hospitals. By Sasha Stevenson
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.
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.
Dr Sandile Buthelezi was recently appointed as the new head (CEO) of the South African National AIDS Council. His appointment follows the suspicious non-renewal of the previous CEO’s contract Dr Fareed Abdullah and unsuccessful attempts to lure Eastern Cape head of health Dr Thobile Mbengashe to the post.