News and analysis

Researchers have found a way to slash life-threatening bleeding after birth by 60%, according to a study presented at the International Maternal Newborn Health Conference in Cape Town last week.

Health Minister Joe Phaahla will table his budget for the 2023/2024 financial year on 9 and 10 May. Get everything you need to stay on top of the developments, all in one place.

The two-monthly HIV prevention injection, CAB-LA, will be made in South Africa, at the Indian drug company Cipla’s Benoni and Durban plants. But a start date for production hasn’t yet been announced.

Follow our live coverage of the second Presidential Health Summit, which is being held in Boksburg on 4 and 5 May.

Anyone can be accused of witchery, but older women in South Africa’s rural areas are the most common victims. Now, the South African Law Reform Commission argues a new law could help to protect people from violence while respecting their right to religion and belief.

The price of insulin in the United States will drop dramatically but people in low-income countries, who spend close to 100% of their income on the life-saving medication, won’t benefit.

The stigma that obese and overweight people face is similar to that seen in the early days of the HIV epidemic, when people used to say that it was someone’s own fault for getting infected, says Francois Venter, an HIV doctor and director of the Ezintsha research centre at the University of the Witwatersrand.

The health department got close to updating nurse prescribing rules in 2011, but didn’t follow through. Real change will have to happen soon since South Africa’s new HIV and TB strategy document says professional nurses have to help to prescribe antidepressants for 250 000 people by 2028.

Public health experts worry that a cholera outbreak could be brewing in large townships like Diepsloot and Alexandra, where sewage runs through streets and rivers.

Three in four employed people surveyed by the South African Depression and Anxiety Group (Sadag) said their bosses expected them to do the same amount of work despite consistent power cuts. Many feared that continued load shedding will lead to job losses and derail attempts to turn around the country’s struggling economy. Mia Malan speaks to Sadag’s Cassey Chambers for Bhekisisa’s monthly TV programme, Health Beat.

More than half of people in South Africa who are already sick with tuberculosis may not realise it because they don’t have any of the symptoms often linked with the disease, such as coughing and weight loss.

Johnson & Johnson won’t be allowed to extend its patent on a life-saving TB drug in India, opening the door to cheaper generics for governments that buy the medicine from companies in that country.

In collaboration with the Pulitzer Centre, Bhekisisa is hosting a webinar for African journalists on 29 March focusing on the role the media can play to increase the uptake of life-saving medicines.

State health workers will remain cash strapped as the South African government battles to rein in its massive public sector wage bill, which makes up 15% of the goods and services produced in the country.

The health department plans to train professional nurses to prescribe pills for common mental health disorders, according to the final version of South Africa’s new five-year (2023 - 2028) action plan for HIV, tuberculosis (TB) and sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

South Africa’s tuberculosis (TB) tracking data is far from complete but we’ve compiled an interactive map to show how well each province fared at curing the most drug-resistant form of TB (according to the best available data).