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maternal healthlatest news & developments
A scene from the floods that killed more than 450 people in KwaZulu-Natal in April 2022 shows the damage. (Delwyn Verasamy)
BELEM HEALTH ACTION PLAN

Study: Linking climate change to health doubles support for public action

New research shows that health-based climate messaging significantly increases public support for government action, especially in South Africa where concern over children and…

  • Sheree Bega
4 min read
CHILDBIRTH

Global wars and fuel shocks are putting pregnant women at greater risk of dying in childbirth

As wars disrupt fuel supplies and health systems, more women are being forced to give birth without timely access to skilled care

  • Emily Maclean
6 min read
Research from the University of the Witwatersrand shows that more than half of the deaths in newborns and about a third in infants were caused by just two types of bacteria. (Aditya Romansa/Unsplash)
ACINETOBACTER BAUMANNII

Two superbugs causing over half of infections that kill newborns in Soweto and outsmarting treatment

Over the past 10 years, researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand’s vaccines and infectious diseases analytics unit analysed small tissue samples of 1 586 children…

  • Linda Pretorius
  • Jacques Verryn
9 min read
Why are so many newborns and foetuses being abandoned in landfills and velds in SA? We asked leading forensic pathologist Shakeera Holland what her team found. (Nicole Ludolph)
ABANDONED FOETUSES

Why so many newborns and foetuses are abandoned in landfills and the veld

Researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand have gathered data from the Diepkloof Forensic Pathology Service in Soweto to better understand why so many women turn to…

  • Bhekisisa Team
7 min read
Making a difference: Mentor mothers from the non-profit organisation One to One Africa after visiting a household in Luqoqweni village in the Eastern Cape. (Oupa Nkosi)
ANTIRETROVIRALS

Eastern Cape headman: ‘You won’t find a child born with HIV in this village’

Babies getting HIV from their infected mothers is rare in a cluster of 39 villages in the OR Tambo district

  • Zano Kunene
10 min read
A new proposal that aims to get more women to breastfeed says this could cut back the greenhouse gas emissions and get countries that produce the bulk of emissions to pay for it
BABY FORMULA

How breast milk can help fight climate change

A new proposal that aims to get more women to breastfeed says this could cut back the greenhouse gas emissions and get countries that produce the bulk of emissions to pay for it

  • Tanya Pampalone
5 min read
Sub-Saharan Africa is on the front line of the climate crisis, facing rising temperatures, prolonged droughts, extreme weather events and mounting threats to food security and infrastructure.
CHILDREN HEALTH

Heat from a changing climate poses a significant risk to mothers and babies

It is crucial to pay attention to the effects of a warming world on mothers and babies because it stands to affect them the most

  • Dennis Webster
5 min read
Up to one in five people can get long COVID — a condition in which someone keeps on feeling ill for months after their initial symptoms have cleared up. (Paul Botes)
ACCESSIBLE HEALTHCARE

The Covid pandemic has exacerbated weaknesses in health systems, particularly in poor countries

Strategic investments in health care for all are needed to ensure safe births, treatment of tuberculosis, malaria, measles, pneumonia and diarrhoea, and children are vaccinated

  • Carin Jämtin
  • Stefan Swartling Peterson
6 min read