The youngsters have successfully completed their initiation and are now regarded as men. The campsite where the initiates stayed is burnt after the initiation is completed.

The boys who lost their manhood

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During this initiation season, we look back at what happened in 2013 when bungled initiations cost boys their penises.
Tender delays have pushed a shortage of the popular birth control shot Nur-Isterate into its second year.

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.

Bringing home baby when your bae is HIV positive & you’re not

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Sperm washing, assisted insemination & long hospital waits — if you were lucky. This is what falling pregnant when you were HIV-positive used to look like. But things are changing for the better.
A doctor bends down to check young cancer patient's heartbeat.

From the mouths of babes: This is what it’s like to be diagnosed with...

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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 and that those we leave behind are cared for. Turns out, it doesn’t matter if you’re 80 or eight.
Blood cancer patients such as Retha Wessels are forced to get a life-saving drug illegally to avoid paying thousands for it each month.

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.
A teenager receives a vaccination

How this country is beating anti-vaxxers at their own game

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One in three French people think vaccines are unsafe. Here's how the country is fighting antivaxxers through social media.
The MyPaddi sexual and reproductive health app homepage

Doctor smartphone and other tales from the bedroom

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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.
From the informal market to booming business: Could this be the future of water?

Water in Ghana from pipe to packet: Is there a hidden cost to this...

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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?

Bosasa, Gavin Watson & the human cost of corruption

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Bosasa bribed its way into contracts. Meet the four-year-old who paid the price.
Sold on the idea: Asiphe Ntshongontshi used the family calendar to keep track of when she took the HIV prevention pill. She lives in Masiphumelele outside Cape Town close to a youth centre and clinic that dish out the tablet.

One she called the ‘minister of love’. The other? He was the ‘minister of...

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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.
Man walking on a dirt road in Togo.

Doing the ‘tramadol dance’: What this latest music craze says about Africa’s pill addiction

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Laura Salm-Reifferscheidt takes a look at the global sensation — the tramadol dance — that’s topping the charts in Africa’s effort to curb drug abuse.
Man scans his fingerprint to receive medication.

mhealth’s power & pitfalls: An SMS a day keeps teens alive

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This clinic used monthly SMSes to remind HIV-positive teens to collect their pills until one day... Take a look at the power and pitfalls of mhealth.
Most medical aids won't cover a new

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.
Man in Ebola protection suit.

‘Most complex health crisis in history’: Congo struggles to contain Ebola

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Political, security and cultural complications – not least a refusal to believe that Ebola exists – have thwarted efforts to overcome DRC’s deadly outbreak.
Vicious cycle: At some point

Painkillers can be a big headache

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Migraine sufferers may not realise that drug overuse can be a large part of the problem.
South Africa’s rolled out the world’s first pill-popping ATMs. Now what?

How to get South Africans to buy into the next big thing in medicine

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These ATMs can decrease the number of patients in clinics but health workers are not helping to achieve that goal.