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Tanya Pampalone
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The first generic weight loss drug hit SA in August — with many expected to follow. Will it be enough to kill the black market?
As patents expire, generic versions of blockbuster weight-loss and diabetes drugs like Ozempic arrive in South Africa. But will price drops be enough to end the dangerous black…
‘This is how we do it’: 30 years of caring for a son with cerebral palsy
Keneilwe Dikoma's life changed forever when her son Lorato was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at six months old. For three decades, she has navigated the complexities of care in…
Could the NHI fuel anti-immigrant sentiment?
Amid rising anti-immigrant sentiment and violence in South Africa, a clause in the National Health Insurance (NHI) Act threatens to deny HIV treatment to refugees, asylum…
The nicotine Wild West: How SA birthed the next generation of nicotine addicts
More than a decade after electronic cigarettes arrived in South Africa with no regulation, the vape industry continues to thrive unchecked, leading to a growing teenage addiction…
Teen pregnancies are dramatically dropping. But researchers aren’t sure why
New research shows a steep decline in adolescent pregnancy rates across all nine provinces from 2021 to 2025, reversing course from previous years. It’s good news, even if it’s…
Here’s how to make drug addiction a health issue, not a criminal one
Experts say South Africa’s contradictory approach to drugs — treating addiction as both a disease and a crime — is fuelling a worsening crisis in places like Westbury, where…
HIV made him expect to die at 40. At 73, Edwin Cameron asks: Who’s planning for our ageing survivors?
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…
Obesity: the chronic disease that isn’t treated like one
A review of 37 studies found that when people stop taking weight-loss drugs like Ozempic, the weight comes back
What will HIV funding look like in 2026?
After a year of US funding cuts across global public health, including South Africa’s hard-hit HIV programmes, new realities are settling in
Cutting: Why teens turn to self-harm when they don’t have words for their pain
For some teenagers, emotional pain manifests as deliberately cutting, burning, hitting, biting, scratching or picking at their skin
Here’s what’s on South Africa’s 2026 public health agenda
We talked to experts in obesity, tobacco, artificial intelligence, HIV, TB and the NHI to find out what we can expect — and what we can’t — this year
Court orders government, police to block vigilantes from two clinics — and put up warnings at entrances
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…
Is the NHI channelling Operation Dudula’s healthcare blockades?
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,…
Africa’s floods and droughts are messing with our minds. Researchers are trying to figure out how
As climate change intensifies, experts say our health and healthcare systems are going to suffer. But mental health often takes a back seat
The falling down place
While the scars left by the April 2022 flash floods aren’t obvious to visitors to Inanda, the township just northwest of Durban, the collective and individual trauma, often left…