The need for doctors to act ethically in the day to day practice of medicine was emphasised by Dr Wendy Orr at the World Congress of Family Doctors being held in Durban this week, while another speaker lambasted government for failing to address problems in rural healthcare.

There is a strong ethical and legal case to be made for euthanasia and patient-assisted suicide in South Africa according to one of the papers delivered at the World Congress of Family Doctors being held in Durban this week.

The family physician is best placed to meet the holistic health needs of patients. This was the message of the US Surgeon General speaking at the first day of the World Congress of Family Doctors which is meeting in Durban this week.

A week set aside for provinces to present their health budgets to the portfolio committee in parliament involved long hours and exhausting interrogation of (sometimes vague) provicial plans for the year ahead. Three provinces '€“ the Eastern Cape, Northern Province and Mpumalanga - were found wanting in their presentations and will be required to re-appear before the health portfolio committee next month. Anso Thom reports on the work presented by five of the provinces.

A senior cardiologist at the largest hospital in the southern hemisphere recently slammed the South African medical profession as being racist, corrupt and self-serving. He acknowledged that South Africa had all the attributes for success, but just had to "get things right".

The Treatment Action Campaign has had an impressive, worldwide response to a call for an international day of action against "pharmaceutical company profiteering at the expense of the lives of people with HIV/AIDS". From Brail to Australia and Paris to Vancouver, activists will gather today in solidarity.

The hopes of millions of South Africans and fellow Africans will be pinned on the outcome of the court case between 41 pharmaceutical companies and Government which starts in Pretoria today (Monday). Health-e investigate what gave rise to the case and the opposing arguments that are likely to be presented.

Health ministers from across the world will converge on Johannesburg for two days at the end of the month when South Africa hosts the 25th meeting of Health Ministers of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). About 115 member states of NAM are expected with national delegations led by health ministers attending.

On March 31, anyone over the age of 30 years, who joins a medical aid for the first time will be forced to pay a higher subscription fee than the norm. This is in keeping with legislation to encourage all South Africans who can afford medical aid to enroll with such schemes rather than placing the burden on the state to provide for health care. Health-e explores why those in a position to do so, should enrol sooner rather than later...

Health specialists have expressed concern that the budget announced by Finance Minister Trevor Manuel did not go far enough in addressing South Africa'€™s developmental health challenges. Anso Thom and Sue Valentine reports.

Mention the state of health care in South Africa and people are most likely to relay experiences at government hospitals. Despite the fact that there is much more to health than hospital care, this is the aspect that forms people'€™s opinions when they talk about the state of healthcare in South Africa. Only too aware of this fact is Dr Laetitia Rispel, Chief of Operations in Gauteng, a province whose hospitals serve a large chunk of South Africa'€™s public health patients.

Almost two years after Gauteng'€™s Commission of Inquiry into Hospital Care Practices, the provincial Department of Health has been working to implement some of the commission's recommendations -- aimed at ultimately improving hospital services. But senior specialists at the province'€™s two largest hospitals believe that little has changed. In fact they believe certain things are worse. Is this a fair assessment or have things changed, even though progress may be slow. Anso Thom spoke to those at the coal face'€¦

While some improvements have taken place at Johannesburg Hospital, doctors are concerned that they are being forced to play God, while Government refuses to take political responsibility for those decisions involving limiting care.