Health Beat shorts

Experts say South Africa's contradictory approach to drugs — treating addiction as both a disease and a crime — is fuelling a worsening crisis in places like Westbury, where illicit drugs plague the community.

The implementation of the NHI is effectively frozen in court and constitutional clashes, blocking South Africa's most sweeping health overhaul since 1994. We talked to health economist Susan Cleary to find out whether the NHI is a wise way forward.

At 33, retired Constitutional Court justice Edwin Cameron thought he had, maybe, seven years left. His story traces the arc from certain death from Aids to a chronic, manageable condition at 73 — and asks what happens when the generation who fought for life finally get to grow old.

The tobacco industry is getting ready for the final showdown as South Africa’s Tobacco Bill heads into its last rounds, pulling out its well-worn talking points on illicit trade and high taxes. We talked to tobacco economics expert Corné van Walbeek to unravel fact from industry fiction.

For the past three years, Buhle Sikade, 22, has been using an injection that gives her almost foolproof protection against getting HIV through sex — medicine that around 456 000 other HIV-negative people in South Africa will be able to get from 360 government clinics for free from April 1. Here’s what it’s done for her and how it works.

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.

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.

Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi told Bhekisisa’s TV show, Health Beat, in July, that he “would strongly consider” a ministerial advisory committee (MAC), like the one we had during the COVID pandemic for which scientists advised the health department on what to do. But no MAC or emergency think tank with input beyond government structures has since been announced.

Elon Musk admitted to using it for depression, Friends actor Matthew Perry died from using too much of it and in South Africa, some ketamine healthcare providers are serving it up irresponsibly. So what’s ketamine all about?

While discoveries like these rarely make the news, it happens all the time. We asked leading forensic pathologist Shakeera Holland what her team found after studying remains at the Diepkloof Forensic Pathology Service in Soweto.

As climate change intensifies, a toxic legacy grows more dangerous in Soweto. Residents living beside an old mine dump face health problems as more floods and heatwaves worsen the dangers of mining pollution.

On the outskirts of Hillbrow, Johannesburg, Fight with Insight has become more than just a boxing gym. It teaches children how to deal with emotional pain and prevent self-harm through exercise, discipline and respect.

With a daily dose of medically supervised methadone, some drug dependents in the City of Tshwane are giving up their needles and heroin. Although the health department will launch pilot programmes at two clinics this year, most public clinics don’t offer methadone, and private medical aids won’t cover it. Could expanding this project save lives and cut the cost of healthcare?

In Snake Park, Soweto, Thokozile Mntambo and local volunteers are researching the health impacts of a massive gold mine dump looming over their community. Decades of mining on the Witwatersrand left behind toxic waste that residents say leads to illnesses and birth defects.

In Westbury, Johannesburg, drugs and gangs overshadow daily life, trapping new generations in addiction and crime. While police crackdowns bring short-lived relief, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime tells Health Beat that affordable rehabilitation and medical treatment for drug dependents are better investments.

For the past decade, the Chiawelo Community Practice (CCP) in Soweto has tested how primary healthcare that starts within communities through things like exercise...