The battle for control of the R70-billion private healthcare industry has been ratcheted up as the regulator of medical schemes turns to the Constitutional Court to define its jurisdiction and the minister of health releases draft price-control regulation.
The South African under-five child mortality rate has risen dramatically in recent years, says a new report. The country is one of 10 that have made the least progress in cutting child deaths since 1990, according to an international study released this week.
South Africa’s inadequate public sector anti-HIV treatment has been highlighted again this week with the release of expert guidelines on antiretroviral therapy in the region. The guidelines released by the Southern African HIV Clinicians’ Society are likely to be adopted by the private sector.
The rising tide of drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) in South Africa may finally be brought under control after a public-sector laboratory demonstrated it can routinely diagnose such forms of the disease within hours instead of weeks. The laboratory could revolutionise diagnosis of multidrug- and extensively drug-resistant TB.
The South African Aids Vaccine Initiative has received another crippling blow: two government bodies have failed to provide promised funding since early last year. It has emerged that the Department of Science and Technology has agreed to pay its 2007/08 commitments only up to the end of September last year, leaving a shortfall.
A reticent, opaque man who seldom reveals what he is thinking or feeling is how author Jonny Steinberg describes the central character in his latest book, <i>Three-Letter Plague: A Young Man’s Journey through a Great Epidemic</i> (Jonathan Ball). Belinda Beresford meets Steinberg.
South Africans probably consume almost as much sorghum beer as they do lager, and roughly two-thirds of the traditional African beer is homebrewed.
Most South Africans say they don’t drink — about half the men and almost 80% of women claim to be abstainers.
Within half an hour of having a drink, alcohol molecules spread into all tissues of a human body.
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/ 22 February 2008
This year’s budget for health appeared to keep pace with overall national expenditure. But although it outstrips inflation, it doesn’t attempt to deal with the backlog of the past few years caused by population growth and inflation. The budget for healthcare is set to rise by more than 10% a year for the next three years.