Threads

Short Form

This country used to chain psychiatric patients to their beds. Here’s what happened when...

A psychiatric facility in Freetown has stepped away from its colonial past and removed these ‘shackles’ from their patients.
|

She had a miscarriage. Now she’s facing life in prison

Scores of women in Argentina could be facing life in prison for what health experts say are obstetric emergencies such as miscarriages.

Blood on the floor, drips in the dark: Johannesburg is crumbling. Here’s how it...

A combination of failures by the municipal, provincial and national government left a hospital in the south of Johannesburg without water or electricity for parts of November. Find out what’s behind the chaos.

What’s pleasure got to do with sex ed? This project shows it can increase...

The International Planned Parenthood Federation’s digital campaign Treasure Your Pleasure is using an evidence-based sex-positive approach to educate young Africans about safe sex.

You could be buying poisonous lead paint – and no one would be charged...

The government is investing in monitoring lead levels in paint, but experts and industry groups say that there’s no plan for dealing with offenders.

‘They will buy me a meal for my children’: Why SA women turned to...

Many women in South Africa resorted to sex work in order to survive the COVID recession. Male “blessers” were happy to pay, contributing to the spread of HIV.

#COP27: These KZN flood victims’ fates were sealed years ago

Nokwazi Mbambo watched her life wash away in April, and little has changed 6 months later. Read more on how the climate change induced floods that destroyed her home.
||||

How these pupils from SA’s poorest schools became doctors

The Umthombo Youth Development Foundation provides bursaries and mentorship to health science students from poor, rural backgrounds. Despite humble beginnings, these students are achieving exceptionally high pass rates. Here’s why.

How Rwanda could become one of the first countries to wipe out cervical cancer

Tens of thousands of community health workers in Rwanda are driving a powerful vaccination programme in the country that could make the East African nation the first country in the world to eliminate cervical cancer.

‘We take the fish out of the water’: Three myths about vasectomies – busted

A vasectomy is a permanent form of contraception for men. During this surgical procedure, the tubes that take sperm from the testicles to the glands that make semen are cut — in about the time of a lunch break.

‘Call me Tumi’: Meet the young woman who heads SA’s medicines regulator

Boitumelo Semete-Makokotlela leads the country’s medicines regulator, the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra), a public entity few people knew about until the COVID-19 pandemic hit. COVID triggered a noisy scramble for vaccines, tests and treatments that needed to be approved — often embroiled in politics.

Dirty Sprite: The DIY high that keeps SA schoolchildren numb

Codeine is found in mild painkillers and cough syrups, and is sometimes mixed with Sprite or alcohol to make a drink called “lean”.

Naeemah Abrahams and the secret to defeating evil – do something

In the hospitals of 1980s South Africa, Naeemah Abrahams saw how often women showed up battered and bruised, a phenomenon her colleagues didn’t make much of. Three decades later, she’s one of the researchers turning the tide on gender-based violence.

Tongues & other taboos: Why queer sex ed is good for everyone

Lesbian teenagers have a lower chance of getting a sexually transmitted infection, but the threat remains. Even though South Africa’s sex education curriculum includes all the right lessons to help pupils of all sexual identities have safe sex in theory, the information that filters through to them is still up to individual teachers.

“I thought it’s just what fathers do.” How sex ed can tackle child abuse

Thousands of children are abused by someone close to them but are unable to report it, because they’re either too scared or don’t realise they’re being abused. Here’s how training teachers to provide proper sex education can help them.
|

Hell is 16 000 unanswered telephones. The low tech problem blocking abortions

Abortion services only got a national “how to” document for doctors 23 years after termination of pregnancy was legalised in South Africa. And while the new rules go a long way to remove barriers to ending a pregnancy, non-profits say crucial information such as a simple list of telephone numbers is still lacking.