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Twenty years of hard lessons — with a dose of good luck and a lot of persistence — has helped Hlokomela Clinic to prepare for the US funding cuts crisis. (Zano Kunene)

How this Limpopo NGO prepared for Trump’s funding cuts

The Anova Health Institute, which received the lion’s share of the US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids funding in South Africa, had its support halted in February along with…

In most cases, older men are coercing girls into having sex with them in exchange for material favours. These encounters are often unplanned, which means condoms or contraceptives are generally not used. File photo

Risky behaviour and coercion are driving the teen pregnancy crisis in rural South Africa

According to the 2022-23 District Health Barometer, there has been a 6.1% increase in the number of deliveries by girls and women aged 10 to 19, over the past five years

Early childhood development practitioners gathered on the Wild Coast to broaden their practice. Photos: Bulungula Incubator

Easier access to antiretrovirals helps people in rural areas

The Bulungula Incubator in the Eastern Cape has set up a medicine pick up point close to people’s homes, assisting them in sticking to their treatment

Not ready yet: Namisa Shembe

Radical transformation begins with fixing how we fund healthcare in remote areas

Once slices of the healthcare funding pie are dished out to provinces, there is little control over how this money is spent to benefit the rural poor.

New graduates, rural areas likely to pay the price for austerity measures

Some pharmacists will be doing their community service at private pharmacies amid a shortage of posts.

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness: One of the recommended summer reads for the upcoming holiday season.

‘If it wasn’t for them I would have died:’ How community health workers save lives

Ethiopia’s rural health extension workers have helped halve the country’s child death rate.

The mandatory service system leaves doctors dependent on the incompentent health department

Fed-up NHI doctors say they are nothing more than glorified nurses

GPs working in the National Health Insurance’s biggest pilot site say they won’t stay because of drug stock-outs, staff shortages and long queues

The woman, who became a medical student this year after passing an exam at a different university, said she hopes her suit will encourage fairer admissions. (AFP)

Hundreds of medical graduates may be unemployed amid budget cuts

More than 200 newly qualified doctors may be left with worthless degrees if provinces can’t raise funds for internship positions

Not ready yet: Namisa Shembe

The ups and downs of community healthcare

Often medical help comes too late for people in rural areas but community health workers could change this

Pedal power: Malawi’s ‘rickshaw’ bush ambulances cycle the sick to care

Already used in countries like Namibia, the ambulances could help cut child and maternal mortality rates.

Stigma against transgender individuals in small towns is a norm.

‘My body is a battleground’: How rural trans people struggle to live out their rights

The Mail & Guardian travelled to the North West and Eastern Cape to find out more about the hidden lives of trans people on the frontline.

Nurse Pauline dips into a medicines box. Pauline and her team travel hundreds of kilometres by camel to provide health services to Kenya’s most remote villages

In rural Kenya, camel clinics bring much needed care to those who need it

Healthcare for Kenya’s semi-nomadic communities comes in an unlikely form of camels, who carry medicine to the country’s most remote villages.

Kirsten King

Mothers and babies at risk in Apostolic church ‘birth camps’

Leaders of Zimbabwe’s Apostolic sects are warming to the idea of women giving birth at health clinics.

Wasteland: Health services in rural areas are often not up to the task required of them.

Care is cast aside beyond the city limits

Primary healthcare barely exists outside our urban centres, and apartheid-ordained inequality is stark.

Critical care: A local clinic is being built in Mvezo

Comment: Too much stick, not enough carrot

The state’s proposed certificate of need will not address inequities in rural healthcare.

To improve the lives of millions, the Global South must drive pro-poor policies on the world stage. (Delwyn Verasamy)

Comment: Share in the politics of poor health

To improve the lives of millions, the Global South must drive pro-poor policies on the world stage.

Although working conditions are tough in rural areas

SA needs rural doctors

Although working conditions are tough in rural areas, doctors need to go where they are most needed, says a medical student.

The boy who lifts Hobeni’s spirits

Sihle Batiya’s luckier than most – but the odds are stacked against kids with Down’s syndrome in the Eastern Cape.

A mother to 30; a nurse to thousands

Undaunted by apartheid and Aids, she has made all the difference to those otherwise abandoned.

IPM Convention 2012 delegates.

Comment: Free healthcare is a human right

Healthcare that is accessible to all is the foundation on which an equitable and efficient system must be built.