Health e News
The national health department has intervened in the crisis in the Free State where financial mismanagement has caused a shortage of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs.
A staggering 854-million people were undernourished between 2001 and 2003 while at the other end of the scale 700-million people are likely to be obese by 2015, according to the Global Health Watch (GHW) 2.
Panicky e-mails sent to Free State health facilities with instructions to ‘stop putting new clients on ARVs’ appear to have been caused by a misinterpretation of the budget or gross financial mismanagement after National Treasury indicated that the province had spent less than half of its conditional grant allocated for prevention and treatment.
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With just a few months to do the job before the next general election, the new Minister of Health, Barbara Hogan, has her job cut out for her ‘ and she is quick to admit that it’s a tough job ahead ‘ one fraught with problems.
Health-e was the first news agency to be offered a one-on-one interview with Health Minister Barbara Hogan. She spoke about her priorities.
More than 330,000 lives were lost to HIV/AIDS in South Africa between 2000 and 2005 because a feasible and timely antiretroviral (ARV) treatment program was not implemented, according to researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health.
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A Cape Town fertility clinic has opened one of the only dedicated laboratories for HIV positive patients in the world where couples can safely conceive and give birth to an HIV-negative baby.
Justice is not always swift. But even after a bitter seven-year long labour dispute the taste of justice becomes sweeter when, as in the case of former Mpumalanga doctor Malcolm Naude, a court finds that your dismissal was unfair and orders your former employer to pay you a lump sum and to foot the bill for your legal costs.
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The 2008 Global Conference on Methamphetamine was recently held in Prague. The objective was to provide an arena for the world’s preeminent scientists, leaders, and professionals working on issues related to methamphetamine to gather to discuss the intersection between methamphetamine use, public health, law enforcement, and civil society.
In the latest edition of the World Health Organisation Bulletin health economists explore the extent of fragmentation within the health systems of three African countries. Fragmentation is when there are a large number of separate funding mechanisms (e.g. many small insurance schemes) and a wide range of health-care providers paid from different funding pools which leads to an inequitable system.
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Last week, just before taking his twice yearly tests to check his viral load and CD 4 cells, Pholokgolo Ramothwala told us how he gets scared each time he has to do the tests. The agonising wait for the results is now over and this week, Pholo tells us how it all went.
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Guardianfilms has produced a documentary on how vitamin entrepreneur Matthias Rath persuaded South African Aids patients to stop taking their prescribed drugs – and use his vitamins – with terrible consequences.