Investing in tuberculosis means that everyone has a stake in eliminating TB as a public health threat in our country: every person, every family, every community, every organisation (public and private) as well as government, writes Dr Yogan Pillay and Gaurang Tanna.
Dr Jennifer Furin has fought drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) since 1995, when she worked as a student in a poverty-stricken suburb in Lima, Peru. Since then she has roamed the world, treating TB and HIV patients in under-resourced countries, including Haiti, Russia, Tajikistan, Bangladesh, eSwatini, Lesotho, and South Africa. Biénne Huisman chatted to Furin about her life working in TB and what it means to see things from the perspective of people living with TB.
For healthcare, a post-pandemic human rights-focused budget would have allocated funding specifically for backlogs in access to health services from the past two years, as well as tackling the present inequities in access to healthcare that characterise the public health system. Tshidi Lencoasa, Khanyisa Mapipa, and Julia Chaskalson argue that this year’s budget does not do enough to enable government to realise people’s fundamental human right to access healthcare.
While there are nine experimental tuberculosis (TB) vaccines in advanced trials, the vaccine pipeline beyond those nine prospects is relatively depleted. Adele Baleta reports on this and much more from the virtual Global TB Vaccine Forum held last week.
COVID-19 will continue to dominate headlines in 2022, but from National Health Insurance to the availability of a new HIV prevention injection, it will also be an important year for other areas of health service delivery and for health system governance and reforms. Here is Spotlight’s pick of the top ten issues to keep an eye on.
Whether it is in the queue outside a community healthcare clinic, in a GP’s waiting room, or in the ICU at a private sector hospital, infections acquired at healthcare facilities pose a threat to people’s health. Nthusang Lefafa looks at government’s recently relaunched infection prevention and control plans and some obstacles to its implementation.
It wasn’t rocket science when we predicted at the start of 2021 that South Africa’s biggest challenge this year would be to get COVID-19 shots into as many arms as possible. But the way it has played out with multiple setbacks and scrambling problem-solving is not something anyone could have predicted. In fewer than a thousand words, Spotlight editor Marcus Low takes a look back at a tumultuous year in health in South Africa.
Although a new community healthcare monitoring report notes some improvement in filling vacancies at Gauteng clinics, concerns remain over staff shortages and the impact this has on providing quality care, especially to people living with HIV. Thabo Molelekwa reports.
Pharmaceutical companies Merck and Pfizer recently announced early results from clinical trials showing that two new antiviral medicines are highly effective in reducing COVID-19 deaths and hospitalisation. The Medicines Patent Pool then announced licensing deals with both companies that will allow for generic versions of the two drugs to be produced. Catherine Tomlinson unpacks the licenses and asks whether generic versions of these pills might now be made in Africa.
While KwaZulu-Natal is doing comparatively well on key HIV indicators, the public healthcare system in the province is plagued by staff shortages, long waiting times, poor tuberculosis infection control, and in some cases, dysfunctional filing systems. This is according to a new report from community-led monitoring group Ritshidze. Elri Voigt reports.
Tuberculosis (TB) preventive therapy is highly effective in preventing TB disease and death, yet only a few people have access to it. Tiyese Jeranji reports on how Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Khayelitsha is helping TB patients, as well as their contacts, access preventive therapy in the comfort of their homes as part of a new family-centred TB care initiative.
The screening, diagnosis, and treatment of tuberculosis (TB) in children remain far from optimal – and in many respects lags behind what can be done for adults. Elri Voigt rounds up five developments in paediatric TB presented at the 52nd Union World Conference on Lung Health.
