Long Form

As executive director of SECTION27, Sasha Stevenson spent more than a decade fighting for migrants' right to healthcare, holding the state accountable for the Life Esidimeni deaths, and navigating the legal maze of the National Health Insurance Act. She tells Sean Christie why, when it comes to human rights law, patience is everything.

Northern Mozambique has been absorbing what humanitarian groups call “multiple shocks” for years. Conflict, cyclones, cholera, displacement; each arriving before the last has been processed, each landing on a health system already buckling. What happens to people's minds in conditions like these? And who is there to help?

When climate disasters strike Africa, the physical damage is obvious. But we’re only beginning to understand the psychological toll. Here’s why Western definitions of trauma can miss so much, and how one group of researchers are trying to get a better picture.

By all accounts, Hasina Subedar is who you call when you need to roll out, well, anything new in public health. Known for her grit, grace and humour, the non-conformist middle child from Pietermaritzburg started out as a nurse 30 years ago. She is now responsible for getting the game-changer medication for HIV prevention into 360 clinics around the country.

In Burkina Faso, more than 70 languages are spoken, armed conflict continues to escalate, and half the country's psychiatrists have left. With few mental health services available, families and traditional healers absorb what the system cannot.

Norbert Ndjeka was born on World TB Day. Decades later, he would reshape how South Africa treats the deadliest forms of the disease.

Six years after Cyclone Idai ripped through Beira, the city's wounds — physical and psychological — are still raw. As a new storm gathered in the Indian Ocean in February, journalist Sean Christie found a city caught in a permanent state of waiting for the next disaster to hit.

A growing body of evidence suggests that unpredictable weather linked to climate change has the potential to injure people’s minds, leading to an increase in the development of common mental disorders such as depression and anxiety. Sean Christie travelled in rural western Burkina Faso recently, where a combination of seasonal flooding, infernal heat and violent attacks has farmers operating under immense strain.

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.

The scars left by the April 2022 flash floods aren’t obvious to visitors to this part of Inanda, the township just northwest of Durban. The earth seems to have healed itself, roads are passable and some new bridges have been reassembled. But the collective and individual trauma, often left unspoken, continues to linger.

Ndiviwe Mphothulo started in politics at the age of 12 in Soweto, where he was born with activism in his bloodline. Now, a medical doctor and the president of the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society, he’s trying to make sure the Trump administration’s funding cuts don’t collapse South Africa’s HIV programmes.

In her nearly 30 years in public healthcare, Rolene Wagner has risen to lead an institution that many had given up on: the debt-wracked, conflict-ridden Eastern Cape department of health. Her upbringing has custom-suited her to the task.

Yogan Pillay has worked under every health minister since 1994, making him the ultimate healthcare insider. Now he’s an outsider, but one with tremendous influence. Sean Christie visited him at home in Pretoria to hear what he’s been up to.

Zane Wilson founded the South African Depression and Anxiety Group (Sadag) in 1994, in the midst of her own debilitating struggle with panic disorder. Thirty years later, the group is the largest and most impactful mental health organisation in South Africa. Bhekisisa’s Sean Christie found Wilson and several of Sadag’s staff in a proud and reflective mood.

When our profile writer, Sean Christie, asked Aaron Motsoaledi for a form of life story share, South Africa’s health minister responded with a swift biographical flyover. But Christie was more interested in a sense of the experiences that lie behind the bullet points, both good and bad.

Mzulungile Nodikida, Sanele Madela, Bongile Mabilane, Nhlakanipho Gumede and Godisamang Kegakilwe have one thing in common: they studied medicine in Cuba.Since its establishment in...