Articles

By shutting South Africa out of its overseas funding for the roll-out of the revolutionary six-monthly HIV prevention jab which could potentially end Aids, the Trump administration undercuts its own stated mission for helping other African countries, says a US HIV activist.

We’ve put together a short list of our favourite essays and longform stories. These stories don't always make the headlines but they often take us deeper into the people and places on the frontlines of public health in South Africa.

What’s driving anti-immigrant healthcare blockades? Sharon Ekambaram from Lawyers for Human Rights says it's everything from the sky-high cost of Zimbabwean passports and corruption to South Africa’s institutionalised xenophobia — and a growing global intolerance of migrants.

The first batch of lenacapavir shots, a new six-monthly anti-HIV injection, should “be managed strategically”, said Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi in October. But who should get what slice of the pie once the medicine is available in public clinics? And are numbers alone what would drive decisions? Here’s how different scenarios compare.

Twenty-five years ago, South Africans battled for ARVs to keep people alive. Now the focus has shifted to medicines that can prevent HIV altogether. Health Beat looks at Aids at 44 — and how the story has evolved.

The South African government says it could fill the potential gap in the number of doses it will need of the twice-yearly HIV prevention jab to end Aids by 2043 by getting a group of local pharmaceutical companies to make generic shots from 2027 onwards. There is, however, a hitch. None of the companies that will be involved have a licence from the injection, lenacapavir’s (LEN) inventor, Gilead Sciences, to make the jab.

From porters to engineers, hospital staff navigate chronic underfunding and staffing shortages while maintaining world-class care at one of South Africa's most storied medical institutions.

Although a new draft Tobacco Bill for South Africa was published in 2018 to get the country’s nicotine habit under control, it’s stalled for years, and it’s unclear when — or if — it will become law. What’s behind the slow progress? The tobacco industry, suggests the research from the authors of this op-ed.

National education policy, which has been in place for over two decades, says we need to ensure educators have the training and skills to...

While we’ve been arguing about the merits of electronic cigarettes as “safer” alternatives to tobacco and the fantastical need for a multitude of vape flavours, our children are getting addicted. Pulmonologist Richard van Zyl-Smit says it's time to put an end to the discussions and make laws that protect them.

This week, the High Court ruled that blocking foreigners from healthcare is unconstitutional. So why does the National Health Insurance Act say that’s what we should do when it comes to HIV services? Bhekisisa asked Sasha Stevenson, executive director of SECTION27, to explain what the law says about healthcare access for foreigners now, what the NHI Act would change and why it matters for public health.

Over the past 10 years, researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand analysed small tissue samples of 1 586 children under five who died at public health facilities in Soweto. Results show that more than half of the deaths in newborns and about a third in infants were caused by just two types of bacteria.

On a recent day, Indira Govender, a doctor in a rural community in northern KwaZulu-Natal, was busy with her weekly session at the local clinic when she witnessed three people breaking down mentally. There wasn’t an ambulance to take the patients to hospital, which was what clinic guidelines say should have happened. But Govender says that day wasn’t a system failure.

Imagine watching loved ones swept away, land and livestock destroyed, possessions lost within hours. For many, that’s reality as climate disasters wreak havoc on lives and livelihoods. Health Beat investigates the mental toll of drought and floods, from Durban to Nairobi, and asks if smarter policy can help mend minds as well as communities.

South Africa has become the first African country — and our medicines regulator the third worldwide — to register the revolutionary twice-a-year anti-HIV jab, lenacapavir (LEN). The shot could bring an end to Aids if enough people take it. The jab, which the health department could start rolling out as early as February, is almost full-proof protection for HIV-negative people — who weigh 35kg or more — against getting HIV through sex.

Although taxpayer money now funds the bulk of South Africa’s HIV programme, getting to the point where we have the largest HIV treatment programme in the world, would not have been possible without donor support. But the reality is that the golden age of health development assistance is over. Can there be opportunity in adversity?