Competition law has again worked to fight a bad drug patent, but we need other solutions

A Competition Commission probe recently resulted in a patent on an important tuberculosis medicine being dropped in South Africa. Twenty years ago, a similar Competition Commission case resulted in a settlement that helped drive down the prices of several antiretrovirals, thereby helping to set the stage for the country’s HIV treatment programme. Fatima Hassan and Leena Menghaney connect the dots between the two landmark cases and map out what has and has not changed over the last two decades.

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Integrating HIV and NCD care is critical but not straight-forward, clinicians say

With the remarkable success of antiretroviral treatment people living with HIV in South Africa are generally living much longer than they did two decades ago. As a result, more people with HIV are also now living with non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as diabetes and hypertension. Accordingly, the need to better integrate HIV and NCD services was a hot topic at the recent Southern African HIV Clinicians Society conference in Cape Town. Elri Voigt reports.

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Antibiotic slashes risk of drug-resistant TB in kids, finds major SA study

Tuberculosis (TB) preventive therapy has been transformed in recent years, with treatment duration having been cut from six or more months to just three or one. Progress in developing new treatments to prevent drug-resistant forms of TB has however lagged behind, especially in children. Elri Voigt unpacks findings from a major new TB prevention study presented at the Union World Conference on Lung Health last week and plans for another important preventive therapy trial set to start soon.

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In-depth: What new WHO TB numbers mean for SA

An estimated 54 000 people died of tuberculosis in South Africa in 2022 and around 280 000 fell ill with the disease, according to just-released figures from the World Health Organization. Catherine Tomlinson unpacks the figures and what they mean for the country’s TB response.

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Breastfeeding while hungry – Is enough being done to support mothers in the Free State?

Earlier this month the world celebrated breastfeeding week. To improve infant nutrition by 2025, the United Nations set targets to eliminate malnutrition and increase breastfeeding rates to at least 50% – targets that South Africa also subscribes to. In South Africa, however, often mothers are poor, unemployed, and hungry – all factors impacting their ability to breastfeed and, ultimately, the nutrition their babies receive. As Women’s Month draws to a close, Refilwe Mochoari looked at the nuances of this challenge in the Free State, where mothers often face a litany of socio-economic challenges and asks how government can support these mothers better.

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

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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FACE TO FACE: Prof Naeemah Abrahams on breaking feminist stereotypes and “fighting through research and analyses”

Professor Naeemah Abrahams, who heads the SAMRC’s Gender and Health Unit has been working in the field of gender-based violence (GBV) for thirty years. Activism always underpinned her research, which has focused on post-rape care, intimate partner femicide, and the interface between GBV and HIV. Biénne Huisman sat down with her to talk about her work, her feminism, and getting men to interrogate their perceptions of masculinity.

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