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Linda Pretorius is a freelance science writer and editor, focusing on health and science education.
Climate scientists agree that intense downpours and heavy storms will probably happen more often and become more unpredictable. But can every extreme weather event be pinned on…
With a R3.8 billion boost to help South Africa move away from fossil fuels like oil and coal for producing energy, how well is the country doing on keeping its promise to help…
The HIV prevention shot, lenacapavir, will be rolled out at South African clinics within the next couple of months and from 2027, the health department will also buy generics.…
Who should get what slice of the pie once the medicine is available in public clinics? And are numbers alone what would drive decisions?
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…
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
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
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
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
If all of its National Institutes of Health funding falls away, the country could lose 70% of its medical research capacity
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
Bhekisisa had a team of four reporters at the climate conference. On average, our journalists walked eight to nine kilometres a day
Seven women are killed in the country each day and nearly six in 10 of such murders are at the hand of an intimate partner
Nearly 365 teenagers give birth in South Africa every day, with 10 of those daily births to mothers younger than 15
Lenacapavir drug can be made for as little as R740 per year for each patient
The world has 18 months left to reach targets that all United Nations member countries signed up to in 2021
CAB-LA virtually eliminates someone’s chances of contracting HIV, but costs about four times more than the government can afford to pay
After 2022, the Ngcobo Community Health Centre in the rural Eastern Cape ceased operating 24 hours every day because spiralling crime and dry taps made it impossible for workers…
Implementation trials start soon in South Africa to help researchers find out what will make people use a two-monthly anti-HIV jab
Because it involves one partner who provides the other with a reward in exchange for sex, it’s not an equal power relationship
