Opinion and Editorial

Play Africa Feature

OP-ED | ‘We are not born bad, we are shaped’ — How childhood trauma shapes violence

Over two years, Plant Play has reached 542 children aged between 10 and 15 in Diepsloot, Gauteng, one of the thirty gender-based violent hotspot areas in South Africa. These areas were identified by the South African Police Service based on…

Read More » OP-ED | ‘We are not born bad, we are shaped’ — How childhood trauma shapes violence
Period

OP-ED | Menstrual health is about more than giving girls menstrual products

Seventy-five percent of girl learners surveyed in I_Menstruate Movement’s Bleeding in Silence: Barriers to Menstrual Hygiene Among School Girls in South Africa research reported distress at menarche, their first menstruation. This finding highlights an often-overlooked dimension of menstrual health: the…

Read More » OP-ED | Menstrual health is about more than giving girls menstrual products
Better Labels. Better Choices

OP-ED | South Africans have waited long enough for front-of-pack warning labels

In April 2023, the National Department of Health published Draft Regulation R3337, proposing changes to the way foodstuffs are labelled and advertised in South Africa, including the introduction of prominent front-of-pack warning labels on certain products high in sugar, sodium…

Read More » OP-ED | South Africans have waited long enough for front-of-pack warning labels
Albinism Adobe Stock

OP-ED | Albinism Awareness Month puts overlooked skin cancer risks in focus

Professor Chrysis Sofianos, Academic Head of the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the University of the Witwatersrand, urges South Africans not to ignore the small skin changes that could eventually require major treatment and reconstruction. A sore that…

Read More » OP-ED | Albinism Awareness Month puts overlooked skin cancer risks in focus
Featured

OP-ED | When Medicine Is Not Enough: ‘Medicine alone cannot deliver sustained treatment success’

South Africa’s HIV response is, in many ways, a remarkable success story. Millions of people now have access to life-saving antiretroviral treatment (ART), transforming HIV from a fatal illness into a manageable chronic condition. Yet beneath this progress lies a…

Read More » OP-ED | When Medicine Is Not Enough: ‘Medicine alone cannot deliver sustained treatment success’
Activists protest inside a conference venue holding signs calling for cheaper access to lenacapavir and an end to drug patents.

Op-ed: SA government’s delay in Intellectual Property reform 12 years after dangerous ‘PharmaGate’ plot

To protect people’s right to healthcare, the South African government must table and pass the Patent Amendment Bill without delay It has been more than twelve years since the reveal of “PharmaGate,” a R6 million lobbying plot by the pharmaceutical…

Read More » Op-ed: SA government’s delay in Intellectual Property reform 12 years after dangerous ‘PharmaGate’ plot
HIV prevention

We are managing HIV with selective lenacapavir roll-out, not ending it

Lenacapavir promised to change the course of the epidemic, but a limited, geographically selective rollout exposes a harder reality: who gets protected, who is left behind, and whether this is progress or containment. What is presented as pragmatism is, in fact, a set of political choices about access, timing, and scale

Read More » We are managing HIV with selective lenacapavir roll-out, not ending it

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