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.
The media has reported several incidents where people were turned away at public healthcare facilities because they did not possess South African identity documents. As related cases slowly grind through the courts, Teri Brown and Thembi Mahlathi of SECTION27 connect the dots between what the law says and what people are experiencing.
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.
The wins are there but the underlying reality remains, writes Professor Kogie Naidoo as she likens TB to a bridesmaid awaiting its turn to garner attention. The analogy is relevant given the overwhelming number of new TB infections and deaths each year globally for a disease persistently sitting in the shadow of other communicable and non-communicable diseases.
The persistence of TB is a reminder that medical solutions alone are not enough. Renier Coetzee and Ingrid Schoeman write that the disease thrives in conditions shaped by social injustice, including poverty, overcrowded housing, under-resourced health systems, and unequal access to care.
The only tuberculosis vaccine we have is a century old and offers only limited efficacy in children. With leading South African researchers involved in the pivotal clinical trials of three new tuberculosis vaccine candidates, we are on the verge of a major breakthrough, writes Associate Professor Angelique Kany Kany Luabeya.
The new government TB dashboard is a step forward for transparency and accountability in South Africa’s response to the ancient, but still deadly, disease. It is critical that we use it wisely to boost our testing efforts, argues a group of South Africa’s leading TB activists ahead of World TB Day on March 24th.
Journalist Ufrieda Ho passed away of cancer on 9 March 2026. In a career spanning three decades, she wrote for The Star, Daily Maverick, Spotlight, and many other publications.
Spotlight has unveiled a new tuberculosis dashboard and graph generator. We hope this dashboard will help people get a clearer picture of the state of South Africa’s TB epidemic – an epidemic that still claims over 50 000 lives a year. It follows on the launch of a similar HIV dashboard last November.
Vigilantes have unlawfully prevented people they deemed to be foreign nationals from accessing public healthcare services. SECTION27 health activists map out the implications of a Gauteng High Court judgment delivered at the end of last year, explaining that it obliges the state to take active and coordinated steps to remove barriers hindering people’s access to healthcare.
It is estimated that around half a million people living with HIV in South Africa don’t know they are living with the virus. One way to help these people is by offering them the means to test themselves in the privacy of their own homes. As Catherine Tomlinson explains in this Spotlight special briefing, such self-screening tests are part of our HIV response on paper, but in reality, the tests are massively underutilised.
What started as a childhood fascination with science and sport has grown into a mission to “democratise” technology with innovative, affordable rehabilitation solutions for people with limited resources. Biénne Huisman sits down with the associate professor – who was once a volleyball captain and is now the head of a top research centre – and who is proving that low-cost solutions are possible.
