In high school, a guidance councillor told Salome Maswime that she would never be accepted at medical school. Today, she is a professor and head of Global Surgery at the University of Cape Town. Biénne Huisman chatted to Maswime about her work on safe surgery, her remarkable career, and being the only black woman in the room.
The quest for access to equitable and quality surgical care for all will not be won only in board rooms, theatres, or hospital corridors. We have to take this quest into communities and build alliances. In that respect, we can learn from one of the best examples of how community participation and mobilisation can help change health policy – the movement to ensure access to affordable and universal anti-retroviral treatment for persons living with HIV, argues Professor Kathryn Chu and Sangeun Lee.
Hospitals in South Africa have been put under immense strain over the past two years as beds were filled with COVID-19 patients and elective surgeries had to be put on hold. To make things worse, pre-existing shortages of intensive care trained nurses and other critical staff were exacerbated by healthcare workers themselves contracting SARS-CoV-2 and falling ill or having to isolate themselves. Tiyese Jeranji explores how Gauteng and the Western Cape are catching up on elective surgeries and asks what is being done about the underlying problem of staff shortages.
In 1947 the first black woman qualified as a doctor in South Africa. Her name was Mary Malahlela-Xakana. It took the country about 60 years after its first black male doctor started practicing for Malahlela-Xakana to don her stethoscope and practice medicine. Much, but not enough has changed since then, writes Alicestine October.
Some innovative local organisations are using film to empower people to make better decisions about their health.
