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Samrc

latest news & developments
CARADEE WRIGHT

SA launches first climate and health surveillance platform

The tool allows researchers and policymakers to track links between extreme weather, heatwaves, flooding and health outcomes

  • Sheree Bega
8 min read
To end Aids by 2043, the South African government says it could get a group of local pharmaceutical companies to make generic shots of lenacapavir from 2027 onwards. There is, however, a hitch. None of the companies that will be involved have a licence to make the jab. (Julia Koblitz/ Unsplash)
AARON MOTSOALEDI

SA wants to make its own six-monthly HIV prevention jabs by 2027. But there’s a hitch

None of the companies that will be involved have a licence from the inventor of Lenacapavir, Gilead Sciences, to make the jab

  • Mia Malan
9 min read
If all of its National Institutes of Health funding falls away, the country could lose 70% of its medical research capacity
CLINICAL TRIALS

The US’s NIH funds R6.65 billion of research in South Africa

If all of its National Institutes of Health funding falls away, the country could lose 70% of its medical research capacity

  • Linda Pretorius
  • Jacques Verryn
10 min read
South Africa must treat the conditions that breed diabetes, including by making healthy food affordable. Photo: File
DIABETES

Diabetes in South Africa: the need for evidence-based science and decisive leadership

Diabetes has become one of South Africa’s most pressing public health issues. We desperately need evidence-based science and decisive leadership to address this mounting crisis

  • Nireshni Chellan
4 min read
Wonder tree: The goal of the trial is to determine whether baobab fruit powder can improve gut integrity, lower inflammation, and positively impact blood sugar and cholesterol levels.
ACCESS AND BENEFIT SHARING ABS COMPLIANT BIO TRADE IN SOUTHERN AFRICA PROJECT

Can baobab fruit powder improve gut and heart health in people with obesity?

SAMRC trial will help to expand knowledge on the matter

  • Dr Sylvia Riedel
3 min read
The lived reality for women in South Africa is they get turned away at our police stations. They are told that domestic violence is a family matter. They are sent from one office to another. If they do actually get someone willing to open their case, the case files disappear into delay
EASTERN CAPE

Here’s where women in SA are most likely to be murdered

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

  • Linda Pretorius
9 min read
Vaccines are not just medicine. They are mirrors. They show us who we are, what we value and whose lives we’re willing to protect.
ACCEPTANCE OF VACCINES

The role of qualitative research in addressing vaccine hesitancy: lessons for public health in South Africa

Conducting qualitative research takes time and effort, but it interrogates essential contexts and meanings that shape our health and healthcare

  • Dr Sara Cooper and Professor Mark Engel
5 min read
Professor Ntobeko Ntusi, SAMRC President and CEO.
DOCTOR TO PATIENT RATIO

The state of health in South Africa: Reflections and future directions

While progress has been made in some sectors, there are critical gaps in the healthcare infrastructure

  • Professor Ntobeko Ntusi
4 min read
Preeclampsia is a rising threat to maternal and infant health. Urgent investment in genetic research and early detection could save thousands of lives
CAESAREAN DELIVERIES

The case for developing alternative maternity care models in SA 

The development and implementation of new, hospital-based birthing centres with team-based maternity care models offer a promising solution

  • Professor Tanya Doherty and Geetesh Solanki
4 min read
SAMRC colleagues in discussion during a visit to UCT Future Water Hub in Franschhoek.
ANTIMICROBIAL RESISTANCE

SAMRC wastewater surveillance and research programme

Wastewater-based epidemiology can play a vital role in pandemic preparedness

  • SAMRC
3 min read
Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana did not announce a budget allocation to plug the gap created by the termination of USAid funding to HIV/Aids organisations (Photo by Luke Dray/Getty Images)
BRILLIANT

SA leads HIV/Aids vaccine discovery research team

USAID has pumped $45 million in grant funding to support the work of a consortium of top African scientists from eight countries

  • Lyse Comins
3 min read
South African Medical Research Council president and chief executive Glenda Gray is stepping down to take up a full-time scientific role.
COVID 19

Glenda Gray steps down from South African Medical Research Council

Gray is the first female president and chief executive of the council and served as the chairperson of the research committee on Covid-19

  • Lyse Comins
2 min read
A health worker conducts a coronavirus rapid antigen test at a Testaro Covid-19 testing site in the Goodwood district of Cape Town, South Africa, on Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021. South Africa announced the discovery of a new variant, later christened omicron, on Nov. 25 as cases began to spike and the strain spread across the globe. (Dwayne Senior/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
COVID 19

Meet the scientists tracking Covid-19’s crappy future

Water in the country’s drains can pick up a spike in Covid-19 cases or a threatening new variant in time for clinics to prepare for an influx of patients

  • Zano Kunene
10 min read
Workers demand that they be made permanent employees of provincial health departments — with higher salaries, as well as medical aid and pension benefits — instead of being outsourced to nonprofits organisations that pay them stipend.
BOB MASH

Why Covid likely won’t change the plight of community health workers

In the absence of action from the health department, South Africa’s community health workers are once again having to fight for their rights, with a nationwide strike planned…

  • Joan Van Dyk
19 min read
There is a sanitation crisis In numerous informal settlements around South Africa. Photo: Sewage waste. Delwyn Verasamy/M&G
COVID 19

Testing sewage: The Covid canary in our wastewater

Local scientists are using wastewater-based epidemiology to trace the SARS-CoV-2 virus in South Africa’s sewage system, which could act as an early warning system for outbreaks…

  • Elna Schütz
6 min read