Health

The week in political activism - March 26, 2014

This week we cover the TAC’s march on Khayelitsha Hospital and an alert put out by Lawyers for Human Rights on the unconstitutionality of draft immigration regulations.

Brent Meersman

News | 26 March 2014

Fighting the white plague

Today is World TB Day. More people die of tuberculosis in South Africa than from any other disease. The HIV epidemic is to a large degree responsible for that. Dealing effectively with the one epidemic typically improves the outcomes of the other.

GroundUp Staff

News | 24 March 2014

Government slams HRC water report - and lawyer slams government

On Tuesday 11 March, the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) officially launched their 2014 report on water and sanitation. But the Department of Water Affairs has called the report “outdated, baseless and misleading”.

Martha Sithole and Jacques van Heerden

News | 14 March 2014

Are sugar daddies bad for your health?

“Sugar daddies destroy lives” say billboard adverts in Kwazulu-Natal in big bold black and red letters. The same message is echoed in radio adverts played across the country.

Nathan Geffen

Opinion | 11 March 2014

Inside the mind of a seasoned donkey smuggler: How an alternative medicine dealer plans to evade new regulations

Last year the health department gazetted changes to the Medicines Act which, over about five years, will require complementary and alternative medicines (CAMs) to be registered with the Medicines Control Council (MCC).

Koot Kotze

News | 4 March 2014

Landmark silicosis case reaches a milestone

The Legal Resources Centre (LRC) hosted a special event on 5 February 2014 to highlight its landmark silicosis case and the implications for future legislative and policy reform in South Africa.

Sibusiso Tshabalala

News | 6 February 2014

South Africa’s water wars

Ma Gladys Mphepho hovers over a pot on a two plate cooker in her shack in Papamani, an informal settlement outside of Grahamstown. “We do not have dignity,” she says, stirring the rice, flavoured with beef stock, that is her family’s Sunday lunch. “We do not know what it means to have dignity. Forget about any question of dignity,” says Mphepho.

Mandy de Waal

News | 5 February 2014

Mother and daughter: alive, productive and healthy on antiretrovirals

Nandipha Madolo, from Khayelitsha’s Litha Park, has experienced much in her life, with HIV playing a major part. She watched her brother die from meningitis due to HIV. Her HIV-positive husband abused her. Her youngest daughter contracted HIV, and Madolo found out that she too was HIV-positive. But today Madolo has a healthy daughter, a steady job, and she is a public speaker.

Mary-Anne Gontsana

News | 29 January 2014

Leaked email: companies intended to campaign against government policy

A leaked email shows that a plan for a campaign to scuttle the South African government's draft intellectual property policy was about to proceed, despite a denial by the pharmaceutical industry that it had approved the campaign.

GroundUp Staff

News | 21 January 2014