Can SA’s new Director-General for health turn around a struggling department?
Dr Thembisile Xulu is South Africa’s sixth permanent Director-General of health since the dawn of democracy. How will she measure up against her predecessors?
Exploited and exhausted, SA’s ghost doctors start to rattle their chains
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.
“This one was brought by God himself” – the doctor helping people see again in rural KZN
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.
This specialist forensic nurse in Germiston helped put a serial rapist behind bars
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.
With over 3 600 Western Cape users, lenacapavir is “cool”
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.
SA is one step closer to a new TB vaccine, but there is a lot of work ahead
In March 2024, a pivotal clinical trial was launched to evaluate what might well become the first new tuberculosis vaccine on the market in more than a century. As anticipation mounts for the trial to deliver results, Russell Rensburg argues that we need to start preparing for a rollout of the jab, but that we should think of preparation more widely than just the technicalities of regulatory approval and drug supply.
Some pharmacists can now apply for permits to provide HIV prevention pills without a doctor’s script
Ten months after an enabling court judgment, some pharmacists in South Africa can finally start applying for permits that allows them to dispense HIV prevention pills without a script from a doctor. Catherine Tomlinson reports.
In The Spotlight | What are broadly neutralising antibodies and what do they mean for the fight against HIV?
HIV is known for its ability to outsmart our immune system’s normal defences. A small number of people living with HIV are however able to generate more effective immune responses to HIV. In this special briefing, Catherine Tomlinson zooms in on broadly neutralising antibodies, the secret sauce in these immune responses.
The woman caring for Cape Town’s homeless once numbed her own pain with opioids
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.
This world-class SA scientist used to cut up her dolls and perform imaginary surgeries
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.
Inside The Box with Dr Andy Gray | Are complementary medicines effectively regulated in South Africa?
The regulation of complementary and alternative medicines in South Africa has been hotly contested in recent decades, including in court rooms. In his latest column for Spotlight, Dr Andy Gray unpacks the legal background and the current state of this still unfolding regulatory saga.
Marlene le Roux: “I’m a disabled woman, look me in the eye”
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.
