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Inside The Box with Dr Andy Gray | How should the compounding of medicines be regulated?

Posted in: #InsideTheBox, Access to Medicines, Focus, Healthcare system, InFocus, Latest, Special Investigations, Spotlight

The South African Health Products Regulatory Authority, with the South African Pharmacy Council, recently announced what was described as a crackdown on a compounding pharmacy. They allege “critical regulatory non-compliance” in relation to the compounding of unregistered medicines. In his latest Inside The Box column, Dr Andy Gray provides some background to the issues at stake, while recognising that some key elements remain contested.

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Vincent Tlala | Medicines safety – the crucial role of pharmacists in protecting you

Posted in: Access to Medicines, Focus, Healthcare system, Healthcare Workers, InFocus, Latest, Opinions, Spotlight

Medicines are among the most powerful tools in healthcare, but they also come with risks. As we mark #MedSafetyWeek, Mr Vincent Tlala, registrar and CEO of the South African Pharmacy Council, argues that the safe use of medicines is a shared responsibility, and is not only up to pharmacists.

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COVID-19: What next as shots expire and become harder to get?

Posted in: COVID-19, Healthcare system, Latest

Millions of doses of the Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 vaccine procured by the South African government have expired and the shot is largely unavailable to people in the country. Meanwhile, earlier this month, the World Health Organization declared an end to the COVID-19 ‘Public Health Emergency of International Concern’. Adele Baleta asks what all this means for COVID-19 in South Africa.

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Analysis: Why has the price of this cancer medicine risen and fallen by over a thousand percent since 2016?

Posted in: Access to Medicines, Healthcare system, Latest

Lenalidomide is an important medicine used for the treatment of multiple myeloma – a type of bone marrow cancer that is not curable and typically requires long-term, ongoing treatment. Over the last decade, the price of this drug has fluctuated dramatically in South Africa and patients and their doctors have gone to extreme lengths to access it. Catherine Tomlinson unpacks the remarkable recent history of lenalidomide.

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Analysis: How well did SAHPRA do in 2022?

Posted in: Access to Medicines, Healthcare system, Latest

The South African Health Products Regulatory Authority has often made the headlines in recent years – be it in relation to COVID-19 vaccines, access to ivermectin, the approval of an HIV prevention injection, or most recently the clearing of inherited backlogs. Catherine Tomlinson assesses the state of South Africa’s medicines regulator as 2022 draws to a close.

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Editorial: World AIDS Day 2022 – Choice, convenience, and respect should be the cornerstone of SA’s HIV response

Posted in: HIV/AIDS, Latest

In Spotlight’s analysis of South Africa’s HIV response in recent years, two issues have stood out consistently – still too many people living with HIV are not taking antiretroviral therapy and the rate of new HIV infections in South Africa is not coming down fast enough. Accordingly, argues Spotlight editor Marcus Low, we must accelerate the shift toward an HIV response where we make testing for HIV and taking antiretroviral treatment as convenient as possible.

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