A new respiratory syncytial virus vaccine to protect infants from severe illness is available in South Africa’s private sector but not yet in public clinics. The country’s advisory group on immunisations has recommended making it available to all pregnant women. Catherine Tomlinson reports that this proposal is now under review by the National Department of Health.
TB can be cured, but ridding the body of the bug often takes many months and usually requires taking four or more different medicines. In this Spotlight special briefing, Elri Voigt zooms in on what makes the TB bacterium so hard to beat.
South Africa does not have enough psychologists and psychiatrists to meet the mental health needs of everyone in the country. One solution is to train community healthcare workers to provide some basic mental health support. Sue Segar explores how one such a task-sharing project is being scaled up in KwaZulu-Natal.
South Africa still lacks an action plan after the withdrawal of US aid for HIV and related health services. But when funds do arrive, how will they be managed? Russell Rensburg suggests the answer may lie in the District Health Programme Grant.
COVID-19 has largely dropped out of the headlines, but the virus that causes it is still circulating. Biénne Huisman asks what we should know about a new variant of SARS-CoV-2, the state of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2025, and the lack of access to updated vaccines in South Africa.
In just two years, the Gauteng health department’s spending on security has more than tripled. Ufrieda Ho tries to get to the bottom of the ballooning bills and what it means for governance in the department.
After the abrupt termination of American aid, the health system in central Mozambique descended into chaos. In part two of this special series, Spotlight and GroundUp describe how the funding cuts affected hospitals, where key staff were dismissed and deliveries of new medicines were halted. In the ensuing turmoil, children died.
Experts say cancer patients in the public sector in South Africa are dying for avoidable reasons like dysfunctional referral systems and a lack of medical imaging and treatment. Chris Bateman looks at efforts to get the country’s battle with cancer back on track.
In Mozambique, the health system is overwhelmingly built on US money. When the Trump administration instantly pulled much of this funding without warning, disease and death spread. Spotlight and GroundUp visited one of the worst affected regions to describe the human toll.
It is easy to claim one is “following the scientific evidence”, but what does it mean to actually do so? In his latest Inside The Box column, Dr Andy Gray considers how evidence-based health policy and guidelines can and should be made.
Health workers have long relied on Body Mass Index (BMI) as a way to measure whether people are within a healthy weight range. Now, a collection of top researchers have made the case for a new way to understand and diagnose obesity. In part two of this special Spotlight series, we take a look at what this new framing might mean for South Africa.
Eight million people living with HIV. Just over 6 million on treatment. Behind these big numbers lurk a universe of fascinating epidemiological dynamics. In this special briefing, Spotlight editor Marcus Low unpacks what we know about the state of HIV in South Africa.
