Access to reproductive healthcare services is almost always time sensitive and not something that can simply be placed on hold because of the COVID-19 lockdown. It remains as important as always to provide services that reinforce women’s rights to dignity, autonomy and to access healthcare services, including reproductive healthcare services, writes Thuthukile Mbatha and Tendai Mafuma.
Despite measures implemented by the Department of Justice and Correctional Services to protect inmates since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, there are concerns among some civil society organisations and legal experts about the adequacy of these measures, writes Elri Voigt.
Every year around 40 000 people are hospitalised with influenza in South Africa and around 11 000 die of the disease. Spotlight interviewed leading Professor in Vaccinology Shabir Madhi about the flu and its implications for the fight against COVID-19.
Government has rolled out an intensified screening and testing campaign in the hope of finding more COVID-19 cases during and after the lockdown period, but the disparity between the country’s testing capacity and the actual number of tests being conducted remains substantial.
Unless timely action is taken, South Africa could be faced with a new form of “pharmaceutical apartheid,” like that experienced in the early days of the AIDS response, writes Professor Yousuf Vawda & Professor Brook K. Baker.
The Department of Health has announced that it will rely on community healthcare workers to assist with tracking and tracing potential COVID-19 cases but has not provided assurances about how it will protect these workers during the process and beyond, writes Nontsikelelo Mpulo and Tendai Mafuma.
Children experience anxiety and panic as acutely as adults do; only they might be better at hiding it. There is concern that the COVID-19 pandemic and national lock down will lead to an increase of physical and emotional abuse towards children and that the economic fallout of the pandemic will add a new dimension of hardship to children’s lives.
Around the turn of the century developing countries fought for and won safeguards to promote access to medicines in international trade law. These safeguards are now being heralded by lawmakers around the world as critical legal mechanisms that nations can and must use in the fight against COVID-19, writes Catherine Tomlinson.
Many of the key epidemiological numbers for COVID-19 are still uncertain. Adele Baleta takes us through some of the best estimates out there.
On Friday (10 April) Health Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize recommended that members of the public wear cloth facemasks of at least three layers. In so doing, Mkhize gave direction on an issue that has created much uncertainty. Dr Kerrin Begg unpacks the science and policy driving this decision.
A team of local scientists have put together the first genetic fingerprint of a SARS-CoV-2 virus found in South Africa. Spotlight spoke to two of the scientists to learn more.
The National Health Laboratory Service claims it has the capacity to do 15 000 COVID-19 tests a day, but that the actual number of tests being done is lower because of limited demand from provinces.
