Mail & Guardian
Mail & Guardian
Jacques Verryn

Creator

Jacques Verryn

South Africa’s first consignment of lenacapavir (LEN), the twice-yearly anti-HIV injection, arrived at OR Tambo International Airport last week. Photo: Mufid Majnun/Unsplash
ANTIRETROVIRAL DRUGS

SA’s first batch of LEN jabs will arrive in February. Use Bhekisisa’s dashboard to find out who should get them

Who should get what slice of the pie once the medicine is available in public clinics? And are numbers alone what would drive decisions?

  • Linda Pretorius
  • Jacques Verryn
11 min read
Research from the University of the Witwatersrand shows that more than half of the deaths in newborns and about a third in infants were caused by just two types of bacteria. (Aditya Romansa/Unsplash)
ACINETOBACTER BAUMANNII

Two superbugs causing over half of infections that kill newborns in Soweto and outsmarting treatment

Over the past 10 years, researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand’s vaccines and infectious diseases analytics unit analysed small tissue samples of 1 586 children…

  • Linda Pretorius
  • Jacques Verryn
9 min read
‘Unsupervised, unstructured, non-standardised, unsafe and altogether substandard.’ This is what was said about the care at two public hospitals in the Northern Cape last year. But is the way quality is measured a fair test? (Delwyn Verasamy)
HEALTH

Unsafe and substandard. Is that what public healthcare in SA looks like?

Claims of poor standards at South Africa’s government health facilities are often bandied about — and get hackles raised when the National Health Insurance is mentioned, to boot

  • Linda Pretorius
  • Jacques Verryn
8 min read
How can data help the health department make the most of the R622 million extra it received for South Africa’s HIV treatment programme? (Flickr)
95 95 95 UN TARGETS

Most people on ARVs stay on them. Does our health system know that?

The health department has R622 million extra to prop up South Africa’s HIV treatment programme in the wake of foreign aid cuts, but it’s only about a fifth of the total gap

  • Linda Pretorius
  • Jacques Verryn
9 min read
How close is South Africa to meeting its HIV treatment goals? We look at the numbers. (NIAID/Wikimedia)
AARON MOTSOALEDI

Motsoaledi’s big HIV treatment jump: Is it true?

Last month, the health minister said more than half a million previously diagnosed people with HIV have been started on treatment since the end of February

  • Linda Pretorius
  • Jacques Verryn
8 min read
HIV prevention services have been heavily affected by the pause on the US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids in the country, with remote mobile clinics that served hard-to-reach people now closed. (File photo)
AGEING WITH HIV
Video

The proportion of people 50+ with HIV has doubled in 10 years

Today, people over 50 make up the second largest group of South Africa’s HIV-positive population — 20 years ago, they were the smallest proportion

  • Linda Pretorius
  • Jacques Verryn
8 min read
If all of its National Institutes of Health funding falls away, the country could lose 70% of its medical research capacity
CLINICAL TRIALS

The US’s NIH funds R6.65 billion of research in South Africa

If all of its National Institutes of Health funding falls away, the country could lose 70% of its medical research capacity

  • Linda Pretorius
  • Jacques Verryn
10 min read
Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi says medical aids cost too much. Will tax alone be enough to pay for NHI? We look at the numbers. (GCIS)
AGING POPULATION

Is tax alone enough to pay for the National Health Insurance?

The NHI Act says funding healthcare for all should come from tax but economic growth is in a vice and many people are without jobs

  • Linda Pretorius
  • Jacques Verryn
8 min read