Mary Selona, a community activist who heads up the Blood River Advice Centre in Limpopo, is putting women at the centre in her quest for social justice. Whether it is intervening when women are refused PrEP at clinics or in more immediate life-threatening situations relating to gender-based violence, Selona is leading from the front. Ufrieda Ho spoke to her as part of Spotlight’s Women in Health series.
The right to abortion has been catapulted into the spotlight by Dobbs v Jackson, the landmark judgment of the United States Supreme Court that overturned Roe v Wade – a 50-year-old precedent of that court that first recognised the constitutional right to abortion in the US. The recognition of a right to abortion is often the first step towards creating an enabling environment for women to access abortions but in some countries in East and Southern Africa, argue the authors, Dobbs may put brakes on little sparks of hope that emerged in recent years.
Special youth clinics appear to be an effective means of providing healthcare services to young people who otherwise might not engage with healthcare services. But is building more youth clinics realistic given our resource constraints, or is it better to focus on making ‘normal’ clinics more youth-friendly – or should we be looking beyond clinic-based healthcare services altogether? Tiyese Jeranji investigates.
Second-trimester abortions, which occur between the beginning of the 13th and the end of the 20th week of pregnancy, are difficult to access in the public sector. This is mainly due to the lack of designated abortion facilities and the unavailability of abortion providers to provide the service and the Eastern Cape is no exception, writes Sibusisiwe Ndlela, Khanyisa Mapipa, and Thokozile Mtsolongo.
Women and girls seeking abortions are often forced to seek informal, illegal, and unsafe abortions as a result of various systemic barriers. Khanyisa Mapipa, Sibusisiwe Ndlela, and Thokozile Mtsolongo look at the state of abortion services in the public sector in the Eastern Cape.
On 17 February, Deputy Health Minister Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo led a march against unsafe abortions in Rustenburg, North West, but a march alone cannot eliminate barriers that prevent women and girls from accessing safe abortions in the public health system. Much more is needed, argue Sibusiwe Ndlela, Khanyisa Mapipa and Thokozile Mtsolongo in an open letter.
Even though the rate of new HIV infections in young women and adolescent girls remains stubbornly high, provision and uptake of pills that can prevent HIV infection have generally been slow and lagging. One potential solution presented at the recent Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections is to provide the pills at schools. Tiyese Jeranji reports.
People who belong to key populations, such as men who have sex with men, often report that it is difficult for them to access health services – for example, due to negative healthcare worker attitudes. Now, a large survey published last week by community healthcare monitoring group Ritshidze provides important statistics that not only confirm that such experiences are widespread but also help in pinning down some specific issues. Tiyese Jeranji reports.
An innovative new technology that allows women to collect their own samples for HPV testing, rather than having the sample taken by a healthcare worker, was recently tested in the Eastern Cape. Elri Voigt spoke to local experts about the study and what such a self-collected test might mean for cervical cancer detection in South Africa.
There are a variety of tools available today to prevent pregnancy including pills, intrauterine devices, subdermal implants, injections, condoms, male and female sterilisation, and emergency contraception. Statistics suggest that people in South Africa do, in principle at least, have access to and are aware of these contraceptive methods, albeit not at the desired levels. Elna Schütz looks at what contraceptive methods are available and makes some surprising discoveries along the way about which ones are most popular.
Professor Lynette Denny of the University of Cape Town recently received the Order of the Baobab, the country’s highest accolade for citizen excellence. Bienne Huisman spoke to her about her ground-breaking research in cervical cancer prevention, her own ongoing struggle with cancer, and the enrichment she has found in being of service.
In 2014, South Africa launched an HPV vaccination campaign targeting 9-year-old public school learners in Grade 4. It involves delivering two doses of vaccine six months apart. Laura Owings asks how the campaign is going and what recent real-world HPV vaccine effectiveness data from the United Kingdom might mean for South Africa.
