Author: Njih Favour
Nomhle Mashiyana, whose 14-year-old daughter Nomthandazo died on 4 July 2023, believes bullying at school pushed her child to suicide. She recalls an incident where her daughter was violently assaulted by a group of girls, who ripped out parts of her hair. Despite efforts to transfer her daughter to another school, the teen ultimately took her own life before the move could happen. “The school failed my daughter,” Mashiyana says, reflecting on the tragedy. Nomhle says Nomthandazo was bullied over her appearance and ultimately attacked by a group of eight learners after she confronted one of them. She says a…
National Health Insurance is a scheme that aims to address healthcare inequity in South Africa. (Photo: GCIS) News & Features 16th September 2025 | Jesse Copelyn Since President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the NHI Act into law last year in May, eight different groups have challenged it in court. One common argument is that it is irrational and unreasonable to restructure the health system when there’s no money to do so. In this feature, Spotlight dissects how the argument is being applied, and whether it has any chance of success. Earlier this month, the Western Cape Government filed papers with the…
This project is funded by: When Suzette Meyer lit 21 candles on a winter’s evening this July, she wasn’t mourning her husband Warren’s passing. Instead, she was celebrating life: 21 lives that had been changed through his final act of generosity – being an organ and tissue donor. It had been exactly one year since Warren’s sudden death. He was declared brain dead by doctors at Fourways Life Hospital after he suffered a cardiac arrest in July of 2024. But Suzette and their three daughters chose not to focus on grief. “I don’t believe in celebrating the anniversary of death.…
Of the roughly eight million people living with HIV in South Africa, around 6.2 million are on treatment. (Photo: Shutterstock) News & Features 15th September 2025 | Ufrieda Ho A dire picture for HIV/Aids funding emerged at the 12th South African AIDS Conference, raising the call for resilience, adapting and also for government to raise its game. The what-next of South Africa’s HIV response will have to be centred on getting back to basics, leveraging on advances in treatment options and learning fast about adapting in a world without US aid for health services. These were among the key takeaways…
South Africa may be able to start rolling out lenacapavir (LEN), the twice-yearly HIV prevention jab, in January 2026 – three months earlier than initially planned. But the details of the agreement that will bring the drug into the country are guarded by non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) – and even the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC) says it doesn’t know what LEN will cost the country at the end of the Global Fund donation in two and a half years. National Department of Health Director General, Dr Sandile Buthelezi, told delegates at this week’s South African AIDS conference that U.S.-based…
The “golden age” of donor assistance, when there was an abundance of donor aid, is over. “It’s decreasing not just for health, but for development broadly” is the stark warning issued by Professor Yogan Pillay, Director of HIV and TB research at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. “This means the only way to do it is to increase domestic financing or change the way we do business,” says Pillay, speaking at the South African AIDS conference currently underway. “Instead of looking backwards and how to find more money, we should be looking forward and changing the way we run…
A truck drives toward Eskom’s massive Duvha Power Station, where 300-metre-tall chimneys spew smoke. (Photo: Thom Pierce/Spotlight) News & Features 10th September 2025 | Sue Segar Journalist Sue Segar and photographer Thom Pierce recently visited Emalahleni in Mpumalanga to report on how air pollution is impacting the health of people in the area. In part 3 of this Spotlight special series, we zoom in on the science of air pollution and what it does to the human body. Towards early evening when the sun starts fading, the smoke-filled communities of Emalahleni have an apocalyptic feeling to them. It’s a landscape…
Civil society has criticised the government for not being proactive enough in the face of cuts to crucial public health services that were funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development through PEPFAR (the U.S President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief). “We made noise. We’ve been saying that the U.S funding cuts will affect us a lot. And you know what we got? We were called names,” says Treatment Action Campaign chairperson Sibongile Tshabalala, speaking at the opening of the South Africa AIDS conference in Johannesburg this week. Earlier this year, during a media briefing on the impact of U.S…
Lenacapavir, a twice-yearly antiretroviral-containing injection, is one of the most promising tools yet in the fight to end AIDS. (Photo: Shutterstock) Comment & Analysis 9th September 2025 | Fatima Hassan, Leena Menghaney, and Bellinda Nkoana A new HIV prevention jab has the potential to bring an end to the AIDS epidemic. But a lack of ambition and unjustifiable secrecy over pricing is holding it back, argue three leading health activists. Imagine a new HIV prevention tool existed that could – if it reached the right people – flick the switch to prevent almost all new HIV cases across the world.…
21 Aug SAHPRA attains clean audit outcome for the 2024/2025 financial year Posted at 12:30h in News & Updates by Melanie Govindasamy Pretoria, 21 August 2025 – The South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) is proud to announce that it has obtained a clean audit outcome from the Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA) for the 2024/2025 financial year, following its first clean audit for the 2023/24 financial year. The AGSA’s audit confirmed the rigour and strengths of SAHPRA’s financial and operational controls as SAHPRA’s financial statements and the selected indicators on reported performance information were found not to have…