South Africa’s National Aids Council, Sanac, has asked local drug companies to submit applications by April 7 to make generic versions of an anti-HIV jab that could end Aids by 2043 in the country. The original version of the once-every-six-months shot, known as lenacapavir, is produced by the US pharmaceutical company, Gilead Sciences. Sanac will submit a shortlist of successful applicants, who met the requirements of the Council’s expression of interest call, to Gilead by July.
At 33, the retired Constitutional Court justice thought he had, maybe, seven years left. His story traces the arc from certain death because of Aids to a chronic, manageable condition at 73. He asks what happens when the generation who fought for life finally get to grow old
A review of 37 studies found that when people stop taking weight-loss drugs like Ozempic, the weight comes back
After a year of US funding cuts across global public health, including South Africa’s hard-hit HIV programmes, new realities are settling in
For some teenagers, emotional pain manifests as deliberately cutting, burning, hitting, biting, scratching or picking at their skin
The judgment complements a November ruling meant to stop groups such as Operation Dudula from blocking foreign nationals from entering government hospitals and clinics and denying their constitutional right to healthcare
None of the companies that will be involved have a licence from the inventor of Lenacapavir, Gilead Sciences, to make the jab
While groups like Operation Dudula flood the zone with fear, confusion and misinformation around healthcare access for foreign nationals, that space has been easy to muddy, something only exacerbated by provisions in the National Health Insurance Act
The country’s medicines regulator Sahpra says it’s on track to announce its registration decision by the end of October
The shot, called Lenacapavir, has a 100% success rate in preventing young women from getting HIV through sex