[From our archives] The boys who lost their manhood
During this initiation season, we look back at what happened in 2013 when bungled initiations cost boys their penises.
Bringing home baby when your bae is HIV positive & you’re not
Sperm washing, assisted insemination & long hospital waits — if you were lucky. This is what falling pregnant when you were HIV-positive used to...
This popular birth control shot is out of stock for the second year running....
Women who have been forced to go without their usual birth control shot are now facing the consequences of months-long shortages.
From the mouths of babes: This is what it’s like to be diagnosed with...
Death comes for us all and when it does, we hope it’s a good one. We hope it has meaning, we hope it’s painless...
How this country is beating anti-vaxxers at their own game
One in three French people think vaccines are unsafe, yet vaccine coverage in the country is rising. Here’s how they do it.
In February...
Doctor smartphone and other tales from the bedroom
From how to spice up your sex life to the more mundane, “does this look weird to you”, there are some questions you just don’t want to ask your friends and family. Relax. Now, there’s an app for that.
When there was no list of free abortion clinics, we made our own. Here’s...
How we found the country's 'missing' abortion providers – and mapped contraception services too.
Water in Ghana from pipe to packet: Is there a hidden cost to this...
In a country where pipes can stop short of reaching home, cheap sachets of water sold on the street could be an unlikely solution, but at what cost?
He would ransom the pills for something more precious than profit: His wife’s life
When a few months of treatment costs as much as a house, some patients are taking their lives and the law into their own hands to survive.
Bosasa, Gavin Watson & the human cost of corruption
Bosasa bribed its way into contracts. Meet the four-year-old who paid the price.
One she called the ‘minister of love’. The other? He was the ‘minister of...
Since the country’s rollout, less than a quarter of people who’ve started taking the HIV prevention pill are young women — despite high HIV rates.
Doing the ‘tramadol dance’: What this latest music craze says about Africa’s pill addiction
The illicit trade in this prescription pain killer has become the stuff of ballads and dance halls but its abuse is threatening to condemn...
mhealth’s power & pitfalls: An SMS a day keeps teens alive
By making a devastating mistake, this clinic proved it was on the right track.
It was July 2018, Amsterdam. Brooke Wurst felt her cellphone buzz...
The WHO, the drug & women’s right to choose: The story behind dolutegravir
Take a look at the newest HIV treatment set to hit South Africa's shores in 2019.
‘Most complex health crisis in history’: Congo struggles to contain Ebola
Political, security and cultural complications – not least a refusal to believe that Ebola exists – have thwarted efforts to overcome DRC’s deadly outbreak...
How to get South Africans to buy into the next big thing in medicine
These ATMs can decrease the number of patients in clinics but health workers are not helping to achieve that goal.