South Africa’s rollout of lenacapavir, a six-monthly HIV prevention injection, requires nurses to learn, adapt and find ways to make it work for patients. Christina Pitt unpacks how.
They are qualified, ready, and willing to serve their communities. But scores of these doctors in KwaZulu-Natal, are becoming increasingly desperate because of a lack of posts in government hospitals and clinics. Sue Segar reports.
The road to cancer treatment in South Africa often involves many encounters with healthcare workers and long journeys far from home. From pink iPhone covers to pink embroidery yarn, and cornstarch, Biénne Huisman hears the stories of people from vast corners of inland South Africa, and beyond, who travelled to Bloemfontein for specialist medical attention to treat their cancer. This is part 4 of Daily Maverick and Spotlight’s special series on cancer in South Africa.
In recent decades, we’ve seen massive advances against several types of cancer. In a still unfolding example, South Africa’s massive HPV vaccination campaign is set to slash cervical cancer rates in the coming decades. Biénne Huisman unpacks the details in part 3 of a Daily Maverick and Spotlight special series on cancer in South Africa.
Two women, two breast cancer journeys. In the first article of a new Daily Maverick and Spotlight special series on cancer in South Africa, Biénne Huisman speaks with rugby referee Aimee Barrett-Theron and cancer warrior Joyce Witbooi, who helps women navigate Cape Town’s public health system.
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.