Bukhosi Mdletshe works as clinic manager at the Ensingweni clinic in in KwaZulu-Natal, and in his words, paying his dues to the rural community that raised him. Sue Segar and Thom Pierce spent some time with Mdletshe for Spotlight’s Rural Health Heroes series.
Cuts in United States funding for global health research over the past year dealt a heavy blow to South Africa’s health research ecosystem, which has historically been heavily reliant on US financial support. Catherine Tomlinson looks at what the South African Medical Research Council has done to weather the storm and what they have planned for the next few years.
Biénne Huisman meets South Africa’s recently appointed Deputy Director-General for HIV, AIDS, TB and sexually transmitted infections, discussing the latest HIV prevention medicines, her career turning points, and bedtime reading.
When push comes to shove, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s talk of building a more capable state hasn’t always been backed up by the appointment of committed and capable people to key government positions. His decision regarding a new Director-General for health will say a lot about how serious he actually is about addressing the country’s many health challenges, argues Spotlight editor Marcus Low.
In part 3 of a Spotlight special series on the role of new weight loss medicines like Ozempic in South Africa, we ask what these breakthrough jabs might mean for people living with HIV in the country. There is some tantalising early research on potential benefits, but also many uncertainties. Catherine Tomlinson reports.
The Department of Health allows some public sector doctors and nurses to moonlight in the private sector, but the relevant policy and its implementation caused much controversy over the years. Set against the wider management dysfunction in several provincial health departments, the issue is now coming to a head. Joan van Dyk reports.
Many regions in the Northern Hemisphere experienced a slightly earlier start to their flu season, driven in some part by a novel variant of influenza A(H3N2). As our flu season also kicks off slightly earlier than usual, Elri Voigt reports on detection of this variant in South Africa and what we might expect from this year’s flu season.
The sale of illegal medicines is a significant threat to public safety. In his latest Inside The Box column, Dr Andy Gray asks whether the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority has the necessary tools at hand to provide protection in this area.
Weeks after pledging to end child stunting by 2030, President Cyril Ramaphosa has kick-started a task team to drive this urgent national mission. But what concrete steps could government actually take to end stunting? Spotlight sat down for an in-depth interview with one of the country’s leading experts on the issue.
Healthcare funding is always about trade-offs, writes Thoneshan Naidoo, CEO of the Health Funders Association. The hardest question in healthcare is not what we would like to provide, he argues, but what we can provide sustainably, fairly and at scale.
Soft toys, giggly kisses, and bright wards buzzing with excited children meet a driven team of staff and researchers producing world class work at Brooklyn Chest Hospital’s paediatric TB research hub. Biénne Huisman visits the wards and the Desmond Tutu TB Centre’s clinical site as it celebrates ten years and gets early insight of a cutting-edge new treatment trial.
Around 3.8 million people in South Africa developed depression in 2024, estimate leading local researchers in a major new modelling study.
