Long Form

Women who have been forced to go without their usual birth control shot are now facing the consequences of months-long shortages.

What makes the world’s most successful children’s TV programmes so addictive – and so strange? Linda Geddes explores the research on kids’ TV, what it’s teaching us about childhood development, and how that can help make programmes for the better.

For transgender people, gender-affirming care can be a matter of life and death. But medical aids still see it as a choice rather than a necessity.

In the wake of acid attacks, victims — often women — can feel hopeless. Now, women around the world are fighting back.

Poor people who have fled their countries are expected to pay steep rates for treatment at government hospitals in Gauteng.

Otlotleng Moolikwe fell pregnant after having sex with her boyfriend when she was 13 years old. And she’s not the only one. One in six South African teenagers between 15 and 19 years old have had a child. Here’s how to help them stay in school.

For years, catching this drug-resistant bacteria meant painful treatment that risked your hearing and mental health. Now, that could be changing.

Some small-scale black tobacco farmers in Limpopo feel that the tobacco industry supported them under the guise of an upliftment programme, but then used them to fight against illicit tobacco trade. By 2021, the financial support dried up.

Many diabetics are dependent on expensive blood sugar testing strips to stay alive. Most in South Africa can't afford it.

C-sections may result in fewer lawsuits, but they are not always the best option.

In Diepsloot, Bhekisisa's Vimba! app is helping rape survivors access life-saving care and treatment.

Men can help to prevent new HIV infections by showing up for their partners. Here’s how:

With a black beret “à la the EFF” and fire-engine red scrubs, Ebrahim Variava is not scared to speak out against the ills of a broken public health system — something that got him suspended from his post as head of internal medicine at the Tshepong Hospital in Klerksdorp in 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 crisis. Meet the doctor for whom patients are always the priority.

Organ donations are rare in SA: donors and the specialists needed to do transplants are few. But awareness increases as more lives are being saved.

In February, Mzulungile Nodikida stepped into the top seat at the South African Medical Association. He tells Sean Christie how he went from playing soccer and cricket while at school in the Eastern Cape to studying medicine in Cuba — and how his career path moved from seeing patients every day to steering an organisation that stands for “uniting doctors for the health of the nation”.

Women in Somaliland are working together with an NGO to eliminate one of the most ancient and extreme practices of female genital mutilation.