The pathology services, the foundation of medical care and research, are under threat in Gauteng as the government laboratory services experience a haemorrhage of expert staff. Insiders say that over the past few months five of the country’s leading anatomical pathologists have resigned from the National Health Laboratory Services in the Gauteng region.

The first medical-aid scheme run by a trade union was launched last week, bringing a powerful new force into the battle to control the rising cost of being sick and getting well in South Africa. Trade union Solidarity registered its Solvita scheme at the beginning of this year as a not-for-profit medical aid restricted to the union’s 130 000 members.

The marriage between tuberculosis and HIV must be recognised and treated as a union of social — and not medical — diseases if the goal of eliminating tuberculosis in humans is to be achieved, says the head of the World Health Organisation’s Stop TB Partnership.

Private hospitals in South Africa could be facing demands to repay about R1-billion they allegedly charged medical schemes over the past three years for overpriced theatre gases that were not used on patients. Trustees of the medical schemes were reminded that they could be held accountable if they fail to retrieve any funds that were paid erroneously to hospitals.

A vaccine against HIV infection is one of the holy grails of research — and is proving almost as elusive. Late 2007 saw clinical trials of the world’s most advanced HIV vaccine, by pharmaceutical company Merck, brought to a premature end. Not only did the candidate vaccine fail to protect people against HIV, it might have increased their risk of infection.

The latest Health System’s Trust annual report is an exposé of the unsustainable, inefficient and inequitable state of the nation’s health systems, looking specifically at the impact of the private sector. Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Misimang’s stewardship of the national health system is also described as “sub-optimal” given the stark inequity in access to healthcare between the public and private sectors.

A top-level South African National Aids Council meeting chaired by Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka heard this week that better policies to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV will be finalised within two weeks. Only about 40% of pregnant women take part in existing programmes, which fall below international guidelines.

Twenty years from now, tobacco-related diseases will be implicated in 9% of deaths worldwide, with the majority occurring in lower-income countries. Already two-thirds of smokers live in 15 low- and middle-income nations. Addressing the World Conference on Lung Health in Cape Town recently, Judith Mackay said communicable diseases receive attention, money and support lacking in the case of non-communicable diseases such as those caused by smoking.