The National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) has confirmed an outbreak of maggot (tumbu fly) infestation in people in the North West province and increased sporadic cases in Gauteng.
“Our laboratory has confirmed that the maggots are those of the tumbu fly (also known as the mango’ or ‘putsi’ fly).
Continue reading…
Water bursts from a brass spout with violent urgency. It foams through the tap angrily and on to a sprawling field. The stream fans out, forming veins that meet swampy arteries carved by footpaths in the grass.
After some time, a mother bearing a baby on her back approaches, swinging a plastic bucket. A bit later, three children holding empty Coke bottles wobble towards the tap across a wooden plank placed over the constantly churned earth.
Continue reading…
Poor service at the Khayelitsha District Hospital came under the spotlight at a meeting between hospital management and the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC).
TAC members recounted complaints about staff shortages and bad treatment of patients, issues which had not been resolved in spite of several meetings with management.
Continue reading…
The North West province government has hired private investigators to look into allegations that its health department awarded R180‑million in illegal tenders to the Gupta-linked company Mediosa, provincial spokesperson Brian Setswambung said this week.
The firm Open Water is investigating claims linked to contracts awarded to Mediosa for two mobile clinics.
Continue reading…
South Africa has been granted a licence to manufacture one of the world’s most important vaccines. It’s the first time the country will be able to do so since the mid 1990s, and is news that will result in many positive spin-offs for the country.
The hexavalent vaccine Hexaxim is used to vaccinate children against six life-threatening infectious diseases: diphtheria, tetanus, acellular pertussis (whooping cough), inactivated polio, ………….
Continue reading…
Malaria afflicts over 200-million people in the developing world each year, and takes an estimated 445,000 lives, mostly young children and pregnant women.
Now, a collaboration between the Merck Global Health Institute, the University of Cape Town (UCT) and Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), co-funded by MMV and Merck will work towards finding ……….
Continue reading…
With winter and the dreaded flu season around the corner, Discovery Health has teamed up with Uber to provide flu shots on-demand.
For one day only, Wednesday 18 April 2018, riders in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town, Durban and Port Elizabeth………
Continue reading…
North West hospitals and clinics could run out of medicine in just days as a go-slow at its central medicine depot enters its second month, provincial communications Tebogo Lekgethwane has confirmed.
“With the strike, it means nothing is coming into the hospital or clinics”, warns Glenda Muzenda, who manages the Stop Stockouts Project, a civil society coalition that monitors medicine availability in the public sector.
Continue reading…
Having learnt lessons from the Life Esidimeni tragedy, the Gauteng Department has taken extraordinary measures to increase the number of audits at mental health non-governmental organisations (NGOs), it said, after issuing 133 licences of compliance for the 2018/19 financial year.
Continue reading…
To patients, hospitals are regarded as sanctums of healing, but the truth is private sector facilities must also be sustainable businesses.To do so, they need to be and remain competitive by offering better services at a lower cost, especially with the opening of more and more new hospitals, clinics and other private healthcare facilities.
Continue reading…