Author: Njih Favour

Historic equipment failures and ongoing staff shortages have placed immense pressure on MRI services in Gauteng’s public hospitals. The province has only eight MRI machines spread across seven hospitals to serve an estimated 12.5 million people who rely on the public healthcare system. As a result, more than 3,500 patients are currently awaiting MRI scans, underscoring a severe diagnostic backlog and the strain on Gauteng’s already overburdened health infrastructure. An MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scan is a non-invasive medical imaging technique that uses strong magnetic fields and radio waves to produce detailed images of the body’s internal structures. It plays…

Security services is said to cost R77 million per year at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital. (Photo: Rosetta Msimango/Spotlight) News & Features 27th June 2025 | Ufrieda Ho In just two years, the Gauteng health department’s spending on security has more than tripled. We try to get to the bottom of the ballooning bills and what it means for governance in the department. The Gauteng Department of Health’s projected R2.54 billion spend on security contracts for 2025/2026 has received the thumbs up, fuelling suspicion in various quarters. It comes as the department claims to lack the funds to fill vacancies,…

Free State Health MEC Viceroy Mahlatsi admits that staff in his department have failed to ensure that the infrastructure at health facilities is well maintained. Mahlatsi says the recent closure of clinics and state morgues in the province by inspectors from the Department of Labour and Employment is evidence of the neglect.   “I personally understand the labour inspectors who are closing down facilities. I have ordered internal inspections of all facilities so we know what we should do. It’s disappointing that people fail to get services because facilities have been closed due to unsafe conditions,” he says. This week, Mahlatsi…

This project is funded by: The strong smell of raw sewage is hard to miss as you drive or walk through the streets of Tshiame B, near Harrismith in the Eastern Free State.  Residents say human excrement and foul-smelling water constantly flow through their yards and streets. They say they’ve been living with unattended, blocked and leaking sewerage pipes for over 30 years.  It has become every family’s duty to work around the spillages and try to redirect it into the streets by digging make-shift canals.  Manthabiseng Mdakane, who has lived in Tshiame since 1990, says this has been their…

Costancia Maherepa sits on a reed mat outside her home in Manica town. Beside her, in black, is her former case worker, Ivone Mupacocha. (Photo: Jesse Copelyn/Spotlight/GroundUp) News & Features 25th June 2025 | Jesse Copelyn Part two: If Marco Rubio came here, “we could show him the evidence” of deaths, says villager. After the abrupt termination of American aid, the health system in central Mozambique descended into chaos. In part one of this special series, Spotlight and GroundUp explained how children with HIV had been abandoned by US-funded case workers. In part two, we describe how the funding cuts…

A cancer patient receiving care at a public health facility in Gauteng. (Photo: Rosetta Msimango/Spotlight) News & Features 25th June 2025 | Chris Bateman Experts say cancer patients in the public sector in South Africa are dying for avoidable reasons like dysfunctional referral systems and a lack of medical imaging and treatment. We look at efforts to get the country’s battle with cancer back on track. Many people with cancer in Gauteng have not been able to access the treatment and care they require in recent years. Though activists and the provincial government are at odds about what should, or…

Patients with fractures admitted to Bophelong Hospital in Mahikeng, North West, face repeated surgical postponements without proper consultation or reasonable explanation. One patient, a DA councillor in Tswaing Local Municipality, Kagiso Mangwejane, tells Health-e News that he waited two weeks for an operation when he was admitted to the hospital for a fractured femur in May.   Despite multiple scheduled surgeries, his operation was postponed six times, most recently due to the unavailability of theatre nurses. His surgery was eventually done at the beginning of June, and he’s currently recovering at home.  “What is happening at Bophelong Provincial Hospital is a…

By Candy Jacobs, Khayelitsha Health Forum Executive Every day, 148 people in South Africa die from tuberculosis (TB). TB is a preventable and curable disease, yet it continues to disproportionately affect vulnerable communities.  Beyond the appalling mortality statistics, TB poses a variety of challenges – lack of awareness, stigma, competing health worker demands and difficulties in accessing health care, with the result that many people infected with TB do not get diagnosed or treated. Tackling these issues requires a “whole-of-society” approach, where every South African has a role to play – we all know someone affected by TB. Therefore, we…

By Dr Fatima Hoosain: surgeon with a special interest in breast and thyroid cancer  The trend is unmistakable: younger people are being diagnosed with cancer more frequently. Over the past three decades, global research has revealed a concerning surge in early-onset colon and breast cancers, with very little data available on what is driving this disturbing trend. Let’s look at the numbers Early-onset cancers refer to malignancies diagnosed in individuals under the age of 50. According to a presentation by Irit Ben-Aharon, Md, PhD, at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Annual Meeting 2024, the incidence of all early-onset cancers…

Maria (we have withheld her surname) sits in her home and holds her granddaughter Teresa. (Photo: Jesse Copelyn/Spotlight/GroundUp) News & Features 19th June 2025 | Jesse Copelyn Part one: How the Trump Administration abandoned orphans with HIV In Mozambique, the health system is overwhelmingly built on US money. When the Trump administration instantly pulled much of this funding without warning, disease and death spread. Spotlight and GroundUp visited one of the worst affected regions to describe the human toll. Hospitals run short of life-saving drugs. Doctors and nurses are laid off en masse. Hospital lines get longer and longer. Some…