Features

Walking on the road in Accra can be dangerous, say researchers. Using a cellphone while doing so can up the chance for an accident even more. Here’s what a study found should be done to keep pedestrians safe.

Abigail Olivier’s* mother was angry at the father of her child. So she made sure that he couldn’t have a relationship with his daughter. As an adult, Olivier realised it could be a case of what some experts call parental alienation.

Parents embroiled in custody disputes can turn on each other — and use their children as pawns in their battle. But claims of parental alienation are controversial and difficult to prove. In the end both children and parents lose.

Strong winds, trees being cut down and drought drive sand to pile up and swallow the houses of the ancient seaside town Hobyo, Somalia. Will promises to green the desert save families who have been forced to move before?

From growing up without a telephone to her appointment as the chief director of digital health systems in the national health department, the sweep of Milani Wolmarans’s life story is as wide as it is inspiring. Sean Christie spoke to her in Tshwane.

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.

It’s been eleven years since Zine Konwayo was first diagnosed with tuberculosis, but she is still dealing with the fallout of the disease. Not only has it damaged her lungs, but it’s also preventing her from finding a job.

The Nigerian government wants to stop medical professionals from leaving to countries including the United Kingdom and the United States by making it mandatory for doctors to work in state hospitals for five years.

In 2020, 1.9-million children were stillborn according to a new report from the World Health Organisation. Read how one woman’s experience of stillbirth inspired her to start a mental health support group for parents who lost a child during pregnancy.

Around the time Phumeza Tisile was receiving treatment for extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB), the cure rate for patients with that form of the disease was 15%. Tisile beat XDR-TB despite the odds, but not without a cost: she lost her hearing.

Goodman Makanda survived the most drug-resistant form of tuberculosis that scientists know of, but he lost a lung to the disease in the process. Now, he says he would “rather die” than take handfuls of TB medicine again.

The WHO may have declared leprosy eliminated in 1998, but Bangladeshi tea pickers continue to be infected by the thousands.

Healthworkers are being attacked by Myanmar’s military — observers say it’s a tactic of war.

Pharmacy expert Andy Gray is the “insider’s insider” in South Africa’s public health sphere. Get to know him better here.

For grandmothers across Côte d’Ivoire, climate change has had unexpected consequences. Once abundant with crop life, sustenance farming has become an unpredictable nightmare in the country’s villages. Young people of working age are now leaving villages in droves — without their children.

Bayanda Maseko lost 2 000 chickens and more than R100 000 he invested in his farm in 2022, all because of loadshedding. Maseko says psychological support is needed in an industry where “it's every man for himself”. He speaks about the impact of these losses on his mental health in the March episode of Bhekisisa’s television show Health Beat.