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/ 10 January 2008

Manto to meet private hospitals over tariff hikes

Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang will meet heads of private hospital groups to discuss drastic hospital tariff increases, the Health Department said on Thursday. The meeting would take place on Friday to discuss the tariff increases from 8% to 33%, ”well above the general inflation rate”, said department spokesperson Charity Bhengu.

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/ 16 December 2007

Mbeki supporters booed in Polokwane

Ministers and aides in President Thabo Mbeki’s government were heckled by delegates on Sunday when the African National Congress opened a conference that could see Mbeki losing control over the party. Some of the delegates booed Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang and Essop Pahad, a top aide to Mbeki, as they arrived.

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/ 14 December 2007

Nurses receive welcome salary boost

South African nurses have received significant salary increases including back-pay of up to six months, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said on Friday in Bloemfontein. She said the increases form part of an agreement with unions of an occupational-specific dispensation for nurses signed in September this year.

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/ 3 December 2007

Negligence costs Health Dept millions

Negligence or malpractice at public hospitals has cost the Health Department millions of rands in damages awards over the past few years, Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has said. However, such cases are rare exceptions to the usually excellent care provided, she said in a written reply to a parliamentary question by Gareth Morgan of the Democratic Alliance.

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/ 3 December 2007

When the media’s voice is misheard

What is the voice of the media? The question was sparked by a recent complaint about a report on service delivery protests, as well as some elements of the current debate around the media. Dale McKinley, of the Anti-Privatisation Forum , wrote that a report entitled ”The travelling protesters” was ”one-sided, politically biased, factually incorrect and lazy”.

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/ 30 November 2007

Zille: Aids ‘a crisis of enormous proportions’

The Aids crisis, already one of enormous proportions, is forecast to get even bigger, says Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille. ”Though a slight decline was experienced this year, analysts still predict South Africa’s HIV infection rate to increase from its current 10% to 18% by 2025,” she warned in her weekly online newsletter, SA Today, on Friday.

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/ 29 November 2007

Manto: Klebsiella babies were underweight

Most of the babies who died following a klebsiella outbreak at a Durban hospital were underweight and born to teenage mothers, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said on Thursday. Tshabalala-Msimang was speaking at the opening of a public hospital management conference in Boksburg, east of Johannesburg.

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/ 17 November 2007

Media body concerned by govt’s ad threat

Print Media South Africa (PMSA) is seeking an urgent meeting with Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad after he threatened to withdraw government advertising from the Sunday Times. PMSA said it sought a meeting with the minister after he expressed his view that the government should pull its advertising from the weekly.

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/ 14 November 2007

HIV vaccine trials in SA put on hold

All HIV vaccine trials in South Africa have been put on hold following the failure of the Phambili trial. Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang on Wednesday invited researchers who worked on the Phambili study to her office in Pretoria to explain the reasons why the vaccine trial was stopped.

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/ 6 November 2007

Six years on: Mbeki, the Aids dissident

President Thabo Mbeki remains an ”Aids dissident” who has told a biographer that he regrets bowing to pressure from his Cabinet to ”withdraw from the debate” over the disease ravaging South Africa. According to a long-awaited biography by Mark Gevisser, the president feels aggrieved that he was deflected from continuing to question the causes of the epidemic.

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/ 2 November 2007

Mbeki criticises behaviour of media

President Thabo Mbeki devoted a large part of his speech to the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) on Friday to criticising the behaviour and ownership of the media. Speaking in Pniel, outside Stellenbosch, where the NCOP was holding a provincial sitting, he emphasised that the government has ”absolutely no intention to limit press freedom”.

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/ 26 October 2007

Manto criticises EU plan to attract health workers

A European Union scheme to attract health workers will hurt developing countries, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said on Friday. ”Many developing countries are already struggling with the migration of health workers. We cannot afford schemes that seek to cream the very limited health skills we still have in developing countries,” she said.

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/ 23 October 2007

Great debate about Manto records

Under no circumstances should a patient’s medical records be disclosed unless he or she gives personal consent, a seminar hosted by the South African Human Rights Commission was told on Tuesday. A panel was discussing the implications of articles published by the Sunday Times about Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.

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/ 23 October 2007

Manto’s records under the spotlight

Under no circumstances should a patient’s medical records be disclosed unless he or she gives personal consent, a seminar hosted by the South African Human Rights Commission was told on Tuesday. Chairperson of the South African Medical Association Dr Kgosi Letlape said medical records should not be disclosed without consent.

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/ 23 October 2007

Manto docket returned to the police

The docket on the theft of Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang’s medical records was returned to the police on Monday, said the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA). ”It became necessary for us to do so because there are certain areas of investigation which still need to receive attention,” said NPA spokesperson Tlali Tlali.

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/ 22 October 2007

Health Dept recalls more condoms

The Department of Health is recalling a second consignment of defective condoms, this time from Kohrs Medical, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said in Pretoria on Monday. ”At least five batches belonging to Kohrs Medical were sampled and failed an air-burst test,” Tshabalala-Msimang said.

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/ 17 October 2007

UN calls for SA to do more in Aids fight

South Africa must do more to raise awareness of HIV/Aids amid rising child deaths and over one million children orphaned by the disease, the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) said Wednesday. ”Each year, 100 000 children contract Aids in South Africa, and half of them die before the age of two,” Unicef’s representative in the country, Macharia Kamau, said.

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/ 17 October 2007

DA slams Manto’s Baragwanath visit

The Democratic Alliance (DA) in Gauteng on Wednesday criticised Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang for threatening to take action against nurses who placed babies in a cardboard box at Chris Hani-Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto, the party said. DA spokesperson Jack Bloom accused Tshabalala-Msimang of a display of ”arrogance and an evasion of blame”.

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/ 16 October 2007

NPA: No imminent arrest of Makhanya

Western Cape police and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) on Tuesday scoffed at claims that police are about to arrest Sunday Times editor Mondli Makhanya and deputy managing editor Jocelyn Maker. ”We wish to state that there is no truth in reports that [they] will be arrested and/or be brought before court this week,” NPA spokesperson Tlali Tlali said.

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/ 16 October 2007

Lekota defends Pikoli’s suspension

African National Congress chairperson Mosiuoa Lekota in the National Assembly on Tuesday defended the decision to suspend National Director of Public Prosecutions Vusi Pikoli, as well as the police probe into the alleged theft of Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang’s health records.

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/ 8 October 2007

Minister calls for protection of traditional medicines

African countries should make use of intellectual provisions to protect their innovations when it comes to African traditional medicines, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said on Monday. ”Africa should make use of intellectual-property provisions to protect its innovation with regard to indigenous knowledge and African traditional medicine,” she said Johannesburg.