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Health Budget 2024 fails to address poverty-related health issues and build trust for NHI – SAMRC

Posted in: Access to Medicines, Child health, Comment, Latest, NHI, Spotlight

The 2024 national budget offer some glimmers but allocations for direct health benefits fall short of making a difference to people’s health and wellbeing. These include a ring-fenced allocation to crack down on corruption in health to inspire trust for the National Health Insurance, taxing accessories for e-cigarettes, a jacked up child-support grant, clarity on plans dealing with climate change and its impacts on human health, and finally greater investment to enhance women’s capabilities alongside the Covid-19 grant, researchers from the South African Medical Research Council write exclusively for Spotlight.

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INTERVIEW: Dr Lebogang Phahladira on his journey from studying by candlelight to winning a major schizophrenia research award

Posted in: Healthcare system, Healthcare Workers, Latest, Mental Health

In his Twitter biography, Dr Lebogang Phahladira describes himself as “a rookie clinician-researcher who keeps trying and trying”. This clearly paid off, as Phahladira earlier this month received a major global schizophrenia research award. As part of Spotlight’s coverage on mental health this month, Biénne Huisman spoke to him about growing up in rural Limpopo, his first impressions of city life, and the decision to specialise in schizophrenia.

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Opinion: Making good on the promise of SA’s TB Recovery Plan

Posted in: Latest, TB, TB

The South African TB Recovery Plan was developed to try and reverse the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the country’s TB response. On World TB Day, authors from TB Proof (a leading TB activist group) assess how the recovery is going and identify four key areas where further intervention is needed.

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Opinion: Health budget slashed despite vaccine commitments

Posted in: Latest

The national budget tabled this week shows that planned spending on public health is reduced by a massive R50.3 billion over the next three years. We cannot accept a vaccine versus health system trade-off. Government must both expedite the procurement of vaccines and ensure that provinces have the staff and other capabilities to rapidly roll them out and to maintain and improve the quality of healthcare services, argue writers from SECTION27.

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Reimagining health in the Eastern Cape: A dysfunctional public health system is not inevitable

Posted in: Eastern Cape, Healthcare system, Latest, NHI

The persistent challenges in public health in the Eastern Cape, highlight the critical role of leadership. Prof Helen Schneider argues if we are to reimagine a future of access, equity and justice in health and health care in the Eastern Cape, we need bottom-up institution-building involving civil society and not just top-down legislative, budgetary and other reforms.

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