Author: Njih Favour

Zodwa Thomas-Daweti, Barbara Williams, and Michelle Bergh outside the Khayelitsha branch of Rape Crisis. (Photo: Sue Segar/Spotlight) News & Features 9th April 2025 | Sue Segar *This story contains depictions of sexual violence. Rape Crisis pioneered the first containment counselling service at Cape Town’s inaugural Thuthuzela Care Centre, a model now adopted nationwide. Spotlight visited staff at the soon to be 50-year-old organisation’s three offices and spoke with a rape survivor who has since become a volunteer at their Khayelitsha branch. When Zanele* was eight years old, she says she was raped by her “cousin-brother” whilst playing hide and seek…

This project is funded by: Patients using Commercial City Clinic in Durban Central say they are routinely expected to buy their own pregnancy tests and notebooks for medical records. Phumelele Mnguni, a patient at the clinic, says if patients miss their date for the injectable contraceptive, they’re expected to buy their own pregnancy tests. The contraceptive shots are given every three months. When women get the jab, they are given a date for the next shot – missing this date increases the risk of pregnancy.  The test is taken to confirm that women are not pregnant before they receive the…

The Gauteng health department has spent R600 million on constructing a forensic pathology building that would be the largest of its kind in the province. The construction of the Johannesburg Forensic Pathology building, adjacent to the Helen Joseph Hospital, started on 3 November 2016 and was supposed to be completed in 2019. But the building was ditched, mid-construction, in  2017 because the contractors weren’t paid.  According to the provincial health department’s presentation to the Health Portfolio Committee in February, completion was planned for the beginning of March, but that has not happened. Instead, another R235 million is needed to complete…

Recent data indicates that casual interactions in social places contribute significantly to the spread of TB. (Photo: Tumisu/Pixabay) News & Features 7th April 2025 | Biénne Huisman For centuries, it was believed that tuberculosis spread primarily when a vulnerable person spends hours in a poorly ventilated space with someone infectious. But new findings suggest that much TB transmission also occurs through casual contact. Conventional thinking held that enclosed spaces such as households, prisons, and shelters, where people spent long periods of time together, were where most TB transmission took place. But new data suggest that casual contact at social settings…

04 Apr SAHPRA joins the Medical Device Single Audit Programme Pretoria, 04 April 2025 –The South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) has joined the Medical Device Single Audit Programme (MDSAP), an international audit programme of medicines and medical device regulators aimed at improving efficiencies in the regulation of medical device manufacturers by engaging in work sharing and collaboration. SAHPRA joins MDSAP as an affiliate member, which expands its ability to monitor the manufacturing of medical devices beyond South Africa’s borders. The MDSAP membership will result in the improved regulation of medical devices and in-vitro diagnostics (IVDs) as it increases SAHPRA regulatory…

It’s been two and half months since Donald Trump signed executive orders freezing US foreign aid. What was initially a 90-day pause has morphed into abrupt and widespread shutdowns of HIV, and sexual and reproductive health services around the world.   Key USAID-funded HIV research and development programmes (R&D) have not been spared. These include promising clinical trials, most of which have South African researchers and scientists at the helm. Experts warn that halting these life-saving HIV research programmes will erode trust between communities and scientists, setting back R&D by decades. The MATRIX project, BRILLIANT Consortium, ADVANCE, MOSAIC and CASPR are…

Medical research as we know it in South Africa is facing an existential threat. (Image: BulentYILDIZ/Pixabay) Comment & Analysis 3rd April 2025 | Marcus Low and Nathan Geffen The sudden and severe US cuts to grants from the world’s largest health research funder threaten to unravel the medical research landscape in South Africa. A crucial question now is whether the government will turn this crisis into an opportunity for renewal. South Africa has many of the world’s best HIV and TB researchers. Until recently, this research excellence was widely recognised by the fact that local research groups kept winning grants…

Nneka Mahote, 32, is excited about her evolving body. Her breasts, now a C-cup bra size, have grown fuller, and her skin feels softer. Her hips, too, are beginning to take shape. For the past four years, she has been transitioning to a woman, undergoing gender affirming hormone therapy with oestrogen and anti-androgen medication to suppress masculine traits and promote more feminine characteristics. She has successfully changed her name and identifies as female on her official identity documents. But now, all of her progress hangs in the balance. It’s been two months since the Nelson Mandela Bay clinic she was…

Malesolle Mokoatsi travels about 60km to General De La Rey Hospital. (Photo: Nthusang Lefafa/Spotlight) News & Features 2nd April 2025 | Nthusang Lefafa People who live near Thusong District Hospital, which closed in 2022, and the Christiana District Hospital, which was destroyed by fire in 2021, told Spotlight they are frustrated over long ambulance wait times, overcrowded clinics, and the high cost of traveling to alternative healthcare facilities. On 8 September 2021, a devastating fire ravaged the Christiana District Hospital, destroying renovations worth over R95 million. A forensic investigation later concluded that the blaze was caused by human error. Just…

Tebogo Padime from Praktiseer outside Burgersfort in Limpopo buried her two-year-old daughter, Revival, on Monday. The 35-year-old mother blames a nurse at Prakitseer clinic who refused to attend to the toddler.  Revival Padime was only 2 years old when she died last week. (Photo: Supplied) On Friday morning, around 10 o’clock, Padime set off on foot to visit a friend, with Revival strapped to her back. While walking, a group of young men who were standing in front of a tuckshop stopped her.  “They told me that my child was having a nosebleed,” Padime tells Health-e News. “I took her…