News and analysis

The tattoos on Zandile Simelane's arms tell a story that most people can’t read. Hidden beneath the delicate blue ink of flowers and butterflies, dull white scars rise, remnants of the time when cutting herself seemed like the only way to express how much she was hurting.

We talked to experts in obesity, tobacco, artificial intelligence, HIV, TB and the NHI to find out what we can expect — and what we can’t — this year.

The top read stories this year were focused mainly on Trump’s funding cuts and the 6-monthly anti-HIV jab set to roll out next year. But our staff picks were more nuanced. Read what you most read and we most loved.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

One in ten clinics in South Africa — across 22 health districts in six provinces — will start to hand out a twice-a-year anti-HIV jab as early as February. The country’s medicines regulator, Sahpra, says it’s on track to announce its registration decision within the next 12 days, by the end of October. So who should get LEN first?

In April next year, South Africa plans to start rolling out an anti-HIV jab, taken only twice a year, that could end Aids in the country within 14 to 18 years. But is our public health system equipped to keep track of millions, who are on the shot — and for how long they stay on it?

Young women are contracting HIV faster than anyone else in South Africa, with about four out of every 10 new infections coming from just this group, even though they make up only about 8% of the total population. Here’s how an AI chatbot is trying to change that.

Two Indian generic drugmakers — Hetero and Dr Reddy’s — will be funded by the Gates Foundation and Unitaid, respectively, to produce and sell the twice-a-year anti-HIV shot around R692 per person per year. We break down the potential budget implications in order for lenacapavir — widely regarded as a likely gamechanger — to stop HIV in its tracks.

At the United Nations General Assembly high-level meeting in New York next week, South Africa is expected to join other countries in signing a watered down declaration meant to curb diseases like diabetes, cancer and heart disease around the world. Here’s how the document changed and how it hurts public health.