Spotlight has gone in search of the foot soldiers of the health system, the folk who get the job done quietly and with little fanfare. Nomatter Ndebele and Thom Pierce went to Sweetwaters in KwaZulu-Natal for a reunion with the original Community Health Worker Doris Ntuli.
Despite the Constitutional injunction on the government to ensure that everyone has access to quality health care services, public health care services remain grossly under-funded. By Daniel McLaren and Nomatter Ndebele.
More than two years after being suspended, the National Health Laboratory Service’s Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer were fired for fraud and corruption.
Missed deadlines, non-communication and excuses sum up the overwhelming “responses” from the country’s nine health MECs when Spotlight asked them to reflect on their time in office and what people can expect from them beyond the elections.
Apart from a potential change in Health Minister, several key other health leadership roles may change after South Africa’s May 8th elections.
Quality of care often falls short in South Africa’s public healthcare system. Ektaa Deochand of SECTION27 takes a critical look at government’s plans to improve things.
The long-suffering Holy Cross Hospital outside Flagstaff, Eastern Cape, has a troubling history. As part of the #Vote4Health series, Spotlight and Health-e News re-visited the hospital after years of turmoil.
As the seasons change and summer becomes a more distant memory, May elections creep closer and closer for the country. Campaign posters line the roadways and fight for space on telephone poles of every city and village.
Orthopaedic surgery backlogs have become old news at Bloemfontein’s Pelonomi Hospital, but it’s still fresh hell for the patients admitted every day and forced to sleep on chairs, on floors and on stretchers pushed up against corridor walls waiting for beds, often for weeks.
In Lusikisiki, in the OR Tambo District of the Eastern Cape, the so-called Village Clinic had become emblematic of a faltering health system, in a rural area fraught with chronic illness and early death due to rapidly-spreading HIV and tuberculosis. Biénne Huisman went to Lusikiki to take the community’s temperature. Photographs, Halden Krog.
Two doctors who run a small-scale ambulance service in Louis Trichardt (Makhado) in Limpopo with no aeromedical experience, landed a lucrative air ambulance contract with the provincial health department which has already paid out close to R3-million in four months. By Anso Thom and Marcus Low
Spotlight returned to the North West recently to take the temperature of the health system. Sadly, the picture is not pretty. The health system has faced massive protests at health facilities, rampant corruption, staff shortages, drug supply challenges and a myriad other problems. One mother shared her story of loss.
