An innovative health programme is thriving and making a difference in the lives of people in a rural Eastern Cape community. Sue Segar spent time with the project, walking with “nomakhayas” from house-to-house and taking a ferry trip across the Xhora river.
HIV in South Africa is not the crisis it was 20 years ago, and the country faces a growing burden of non-communicable diseases, but specific investments in HIV nevertheless continue to offer excellent value for money for governments and donors alike. As people gather for the 2023 International AIDS Society Conference in Brisbane, Australia, Marcus Low argues that while funding for HIV interventions remains absolutely essential, it is also critical for the future of the HIV response and people living with HIV that HIV should now be better integrated with other healthcare services, especially those for diabetes and hypertension.
Receiving the Public Health Association’s annual PHILA award recently is one of a string of accolades Professor Mosa Moshabela, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research and Innovation at the University of KwaZulu-Natal has under his belt. Biénne Huisman spoke to him about his journey to becoming a doctor and his deep-seated commitment to public health, health innovation, and improving health systems.
For all the suffering and death the COVID-19 pandemic has caused over the last 12 months, it has arguably also provided a unique opportunity to test some of the mechanisms behind South Africa’s proposed National Health Insurance (NHI) system. The centralised procurement of vaccines and the contracting of doctors, for example, are probably not dissimilar from the arrangements we might see under NHI. Kathryn Cleary asks three leading health experts what lessons, for NHI, we should learn from the COVID-19 response.
Many types of surgery are being delayed in South African hospitals. HIV and TB testing rates are down. Kathryn Cleary investigates the impact the COVID-19 pandemic is having on ‘normal’ healthcare in South Africa.
A healthcare crisis emerges, a report is published, the Eastern Cape Department of Health promises to act. This cycle repeats over and over again without much really being fixed, writes Kathryn Cleary.
