As World AIDS Day 2025 swings by, CAPRISA Director Professor Salim Abdool Karim reflects on the frantic days following this year’s unprecedented cuts to health aid and research funding from the US, arguing that the deliberate disruptiveness was designed to be cruel. Nonetheless, he argues, our HIV response must now forge ahead on a path that is more affordable, sustainable and independent.
We need to confront the racialised and class-based structures that still dictate society’s oral health outcomes, argues Dr Bulela Vava as we head toward the end of this year’s National Oral Health Month.
It is often enlightening to ask how and why certain services differ in the ways they do between the private and public healthcare sectors. By too rigidly focusing on the NHI Bill, argues Spotlight Editor Marcus Low, government risks losing sight of the many other interesting answers to this and other important questions about healthcare reform in South Africa.
The African Christian Democratic Party and partners are in the High Court today and tomorrow seeking to stop the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines to adolescents. But in a context where the majority of learners attend schools with infrastructure problems and serious overcrowding, vaccines remain a critical tool to keep learners safe and prevent outbreaks of infection at schools, argue Julia Chaskalson and Zeenat Sujee.
The successful implementation of National Health Insurance (NHI) will rely heavily on effective governance at district level. The NHI Bill correctly identifies district hospitals as key during the early transitional NHI phases. Failing to capacitate them for the challenges ahead could prove disastrous, argues Russell Rensburg and Claire Botha.
