Creator
Sean Christie
For 20 years, Kwanele Asante told health systems to listen to patients. Then the UN gave her the mic
South African lawyer and bioethicist Kwanele Asante transformed her personal health challenges with breast cancer and chronic illness into decades of fierce advocacy for people…
When sewage floods your home, it floods your mind too
In Nairobi's Mukuru kwa Reuben, residents face a grim reality: homes repeatedly flooded by sewage due to dysfunctional drainage. This article explores the profound psychological…
'The law is clear': Sasha Stevenson fights back as vigilantes try to keep migrants out of clinics
Sasha Stevenson, Executive Director of SECTION27, reflects on over a decade of fighting for human rights in South Africa. From securing healthcare access for migrants against…
What years of war, cyclones and displacement have wrought upon the people of northern Mozambique
Northern Mozambique has been absorbing what humanitarian groups call “multiple shocks” for years. Conflict, cyclones, cholera, displacement; each arriving before the last has…
Somebody call Hasina
Amid the mostly depressing HIV headlines of recent times, concerned as they mainly are with the deadly impacts of donor defunding, South Africa’s imminent roll-out of a…
The spirits, the marabouts and the 11 psychiatrists in Burkina Faso
In Burkina Faso, more than 70 languages are spoken, armed conflict continues to escalate and half the country’s psychiatrists have left. With few mental health services…
How a boy born on World TB Day helped turn the tide on SA’s deadliest TB
Norbert Ndjeka was born on World TB Day. Decades later, he would reshape how South Africa treats the deadliest forms of the disease
Life between cyclones: How Beira’s people carry the mental weight of storms that never really end
Six years after Cyclone Idai ripped through Beira, the city’s wounds — physical and psychological — are still raw. As a new storm gathered in the Indian Ocean in February,…
Heavy weather and the mind of the West African farmer
A growing body of evidence suggests that unpredictable weather linked to climate change has the potential to injure people’s minds, leading to an increase in the development of…
Anatomy of a hospital: Groote Schuur in a time of budget and staffing cuts
From porters to engineers, hospital staff navigate chronic underfunding and staffing shortages while maintaining world-class care at one of South Africa’s most storied medical…
Building toilets, fighting TB: Candice Andisiwe Sehoma’s life of activism
From discontinued insulin pens to overpriced TB drugs, meet the young South African holding drug makers to account on behalf of patients
At 16, he mediated a highjacking. Now he’s negotiating for the survival of HIV programmes
Ndiviwe Mphothulo, a medical doctor and president of the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society, is trying to make sure the Trump administration’s funding cuts don’t collapse…
HIV research: Professor screw it, let’s do it
Francois Venter talks about his unorthodox inaugural lecture, his work during the Aids crisis and his shoot-from-the-hip fix of our healthcare system
How one woman set up a mental health helpline for the whole of South Africa
When Zane Wilson faced crippling panic attacks, she struggled to find help. So she decided to do something about it
Joburg’s water woes are self-inflicted
The temporary shutdown of the supply from Lesotho is not the problem