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Opinion

The Bhekisisa Centre for Health Journalism is based in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Bhekisisa is one of only a few media outlets in the Global South specialising in solutions-based narrative features and analysis. We not only uncover problems but also critically evaluate the solutions meant to fix them. It’s an approach we also take with our opinion pieces.

What makes a good op-ed? What can I expect from the editing process? Who do I pitch a possible opinion piece to? Get the answers to all these questions along with some handy writing tips here before you make a submission.

How your period could be messing with your mental health

Suicide and the violence of our words

What if we thought of suicide as the outcome of a terminal illness instead of the outcome of an action?
Solutions: A health technician analyses blood samples for tuberculosis in a high-tech TB lab in Lima

Is ‘all-in-one healthcare’ a dream?

Is getting all you need from one health team far fetched? Actually not. It's one field where the public health system beats the private one.
Because of the complexity of the malaria parasite

How Zambia is beating malaria

A decade ago, most countries used only localised strategies. But Zambia decided to make bed nets, insecticides, and drugs available nationwide.
The country's largest HIV lobby group

‘We can’t accept the new HIV, TB plan’ – Treatment Action Campaign

The country's strongest HIV lobby group won't back South Africa's HIV and TB plan just yet. Here are their demands.
Helen Zille has the right to her opinion

If HIV denialists don’t deserve a platform, why should Helen Zille?

Journalism does not begin or end with free speech, we have an ethical obligation not to give platform for abhorrent views in the name of free speech.
One day of new

SA may hold key to curing world’s rising drug-resistant TB epidemic

New drug combinations tested in the country may be a lifeline to those with TB most unlikely to survive it.
Medical student Inati Mcapazeli studies a chest x-ray at Cape Town’s Brooklyn Chest Hospital on World TB Day 2012.

We can achieve a TB-free South Africa, but it’s time to pick up the...

Today, SA is seeing fewer new TB cases and deaths than ever before.
Women protest in Cairo in 2014. When activists have uteruses

Women’s bodies are the battleground for civil liberties

Female activists face persecution largely because their existence is an affront to the patriarchal nature of societies.
community healthcare workers

Radical transformation begins with fixing how we fund healthcare in remote areas

Once slices of the healthcare funding pie are dished out to provinces, there is little control over how this money is spent to benefit the rural poor.
Ask a different question and you may get a different answer: New research finds that the way in which you ask about disability may determine national statistics

Service delivery starts with data. See who’s been missing from the spreadsheets

Without accurate data, maginalised groups risk being left behind - again.
Fewer than 15 countries on the continent fund more than half of their national immunisation programmes.

Looking to invest in health? Here’s how to make the most of it

Every dollar spent on vaccines brings a 16-fold return on investment — and up to $44 for every dollar if broader benefits are taken into account.
Gold miners work the Cooke Shaft in Johannesburg. Thousands of gold miners and their families are now seeking compensation for the sector's failure to protect miners from silicosis

#MiningIndaba: Why the real mining investors won’t be in Cape Town this week

The most important people in mining will not be among the movers and shakers at the high-profile event this week.
The United Nations will bring together 192 countries for the fourth high-level meeting on tuberculosis in 2018.

United Nations’ first high-level meeting on TB could usher in a new world order

The global body heeds calls by SA health minister Aaron Motsoaledi for high-level meeting on age-old killer.
Protestors demonstrate against sexual violence. The National Sexual Assault Policy has been in draft form since 2011. If finalised

It’s time to stop treating sexual violence as just coincidental to HIV infections

A national policy on sexual assault has been in draft form for years. Now, the country now has the chance to put survivors of sexual violence first.
Why you shouldn't be ashamed of your period

Why treasury won’t support a fall in the tampon tax

Pontsho Pilane recently presented a proposal to Parliament to introduce free pads for poor people who menstruate. Here’s what she learned.
In many countries women allege they were sterilised without consent during or shortly after labour.

Forced sterilisations rob African women of more than just motherhood

The ability to bear children continues to decide many women's social standing and inheritance.