Health e News
By Chris Bateman, Freelance Journalist With HIV positivity among urban transgender women in South Africa estimated at 46%, it is becoming increasingly urgent for healthcare workers to undergo sensitivity training. A transgender woman is a person who was assigned the male sex at birth but identifies and lives as woman. This message emerged in a session on, “Social enablers for key populations,” at the sixth HIV Clinicians’ Society Conference in Cape Town last week. Key populations are defined groups of people who are at increased risk of HIV acquisition. They also often have legal and social issues related to their identities or behaviours that increase their vulnerability to HIV. Professor Elma de Vries, a family physician, and secretary of the Professional Association for Transgender Health, says gender-affirming healthcare is highly effective in improving health and wellbeing. In the HIV context, it has been shown to improve viral load suppression. Service
Karen Hofman, University of the Witwatersrand and Susan Goldstein, University of the Witwatersrand Death rates in South Africa have declined slightly during the past few years. But the country faces a steady rise in both death and disability caused by increases in non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and cancer. According to the NCD Alliance, a civil society network, non-communicable diseases cause 71% of deaths globally. Of these deaths 85% occur in low and middle income countries. In South Africa, according to Statistics South Africa, there was an increase of 58% in deaths from non-communicable diseases from 1997 to 2018. Diabetes is the second leading cause of death in South Africa after tuberculosis. Diabetes affects 12% of the adult population, wreaking massive damage to individuals’ health and livelihoods, and to the national fiscus. The direct cost of diabetes to South Africa’s health system is R2.7 billion (US$150 million) – and that
By Chris Bateman, Freelance Journalist Only two-thirds of children in South Africa getting treatment for HIV are virally suppressed. Viral suppression is a measure of how well antiretroviral (ARVs) drugs reduce HIV viral load. A high HIV viral load suggests that the person is not taking their treatment constantly, or that the treatment isn’t working. Delays in sourcing long-acting, palatable oral ARVs for South Africa’s infants and children have been cited as a reason for the low viral load suppression. And, children need an adult caregiver to help them take the medication on a daily basis. This routine gets disrupted every time there’s a change in adult caregiving. This, in turn, leads to lower drug adherence. Professor Mo Archary, Paediatric Infectious Disease Specialist at King Edward VIII Hospital in Durban, says this has had a lethal impact. He cited a watershed multi-author study on the impact of the AIDS epidemic
The global measures to end the tuberculosis epidemic are showing signs of recovery post-Covid. More cases have been diagnosed and the number of people who died from the disease has gone down. Despite this apparent recovery, the World Health Organisation (WHO) says urgent action is needed to end the global TB epidemic by 2030. On Tuesday the WHO launched the global TB report which takes stock of the epidemic and the progress towards its elimination. The report paints a stark picture: targets for TB treatment, prevention and funding have been missed. TB is preventable and curable, but it was the world’s second leading cause of death from an infectious disease in 2022. It spreads through the air when a person who is sick with the disease sneezes, spits or coughs. It often affects the lungs but can occur in other parts of the body. Globally in 2022, TB caused an
Charles Shey Wiysonge, Stellenbosch University The BCG vaccine for TB has been used for 100 years. It is largely effective for children under five, but less so in older people and can’t be used on patients who have certain medical conditions. Today we’re the closest we’ve ever been to discovering a vaccine that might replace or complement it. Charles Shey Wiysonge, the World Health Organization’s Regional Adviser for Immunisation, discusses the latest developments in the fight against one of the world’s deadliest diseases. Why has it taken so long? We do not yet have a new vaccine for TB. But, for the first time, there are several vaccine candidates that are at advanced stages of clinical development. Vaccine development usually takes decades and unfolds step by step. Experimental vaccine candidates are created in the laboratory and tested in animals before moving into progressively larger human clinical trials. Clinical trials are
Lerato Mthunzi, Health and Allied Workers Indaba Trade Union (HAITU) General Secretary October is mental health awareness month and as it draws to an end, a few key issues must be highlighted to make this month less of a ritualistic procession filled with lofty rhetoric, yet minimal action. South Africa is a nation affected by high levels of mental illness. It is important to deal meaningfully with the serious issue of mental illness. In 2022, the MRC/Wits Developmental Pathways for Health Research Unit (DPHRU) released a paper titled, “The prevalence of probable depression and probable anxiety, and the associations with adverse childhood experiences and socio-demographics: A National Survey in South Africa”. The report found that more than a quarter of South Africans suffer from “probable depression”. These alarming statistics are of grave concern, and it should force us to recognise that this is a crisis which deserves our attention all
Mmamapudi Kubjane, University of the Witwatersrand and Leigh Johnson, University of Cape Town Around the world, men are more likely to get TB and to die from it than women. We recently conducted research to establish the various factors that explain higher rates of TB among men in South Africa. South Africa is ranked among the top six countries contributing to 60% of the global burden of TB. Our main finding was that men are 70% more likely to develop TB and die from the disease, compared to women. We estimated that in 2019, 801 per 100,000 adult men developed TB while among women the rate was 478 per 100,000. Current TB interventions focus on biomedical approaches emphasising preventive TB medication, diagnosing TB patients and treating them with anti-TB drugs. Our research demonstrates, however, that dealing with socioeconomic conditions and other determinants of TB is also important. Men’s access to
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Jane Battersby, University of Cape Town and Gareth Haysom, University of Cape Town DISCLAIMER: This is an old piece from 2018, but which still holds relevance. Our News Editor Ina Skosana was previously at The Conversation Africa. Owners of small shops in South Africa – in most cases foreigners – have been accused of stocking counterfeit food and food that’s past its sell-by date. The issue has been caught up in xenophobic violence, with shop owners targeted by South Africans . There is very little hard data about what’s referred to as “fake food” in both the formal and informal sectors. This means the issue is politically charged and dominated by opinions, not evidence. The Conversation Africa’s Ina Skosana asked Jane Battersby-Lennard and Gareth Haysom to unpack this issue. What is counterfeit food? There are many different kinds of counterfeiting. Not all pose a risk to consumers, though some clearly
Glenda Gray, South African Medical Research Council South African-born Professor Hoosen “Jerry” Coovadia, renowned academic and prominent anti-apartheid activist, passed away on 4 October. As a paediatrician I was privileged to know and work with him over two decades. Prior to that I knew him when we were both health activists in apartheid South Africa. In 2019 Coovadia was profiled in the leading health academic journal, The Lancet, as an icon in South African health. The profile described him as the “Nelson Mandela of health”. This was in tribute to his dedication to ameliorating the diseases that afflicted children of South Africa, like malnutrition, measles and HIV, and his role in health activism. In 2014, in my capacity as the president of the South African Medical Research Council, I was honoured to award him the SAMRC Presidential Award in recognition of his life-long work in child health, his impact in