Bakery employees develop asthma when they are exposed to high levels of flour dust. Although there are international guidelines these are often not protective and badly implemented.
South Africa, despite its bold commitments to improve breastfeeding, does not have national data to monitor breastfeeding rates to ensure that its policies are being effective.
Testing and treatment is important in tackling HIV. But stigma and access need to be addressed too.
Shutterstock
Taking antiretrovirals is key to reducing HIV infection rates, but the challenge lies in making sure people who know they are infected actually take the drugs.
Mobile technology can help people adhere to treatment regimes.
shutterstock
Natalie Leon, South African Medical Research Council
If hypertension patients don’t take their medication regularly, they can’t control this lifelong disease. Text message communication from clinics can help remind them.
An unacceptably high proportion of children in South Africa live in poor conditions.
Megan Trace/Flickr
Inequalities in the nutritional status of poor and rich have been mitigated through various social protection policies, but children in South Africa remain at risk of malnutrition.
A recent advert for South Africa’s Castle Lager.
Brandcouncil SA
The messages that adolescents receive from sexuality education classes are frequently negative. It’s time for the curriculum to become more empowering for learners and teachers.
In many rural areas, poor people are suffering from malnutrition, which takes the form of stunting and obesity. To change this, their food environments must change.
Hypertension is one of the leading causes of cardiovascular diseases such as stroke, heart attacks, heart failure and peripheral vascular disease. And in the developing world, it is on the rise.
African scientists have developed and patented a test for TB that overcomes two major challenges with current methods: it delivers quick results and is much cheaper.
In South Africa, many child homicides are the result of children being abandoned.
Shutterstock
The high rate of child homicides in South Africa shows that reproductive, mental health and social services are failing to help vulnerable mothers.
Women should attend antenatal clinics in the first trimester of their pregnancies and regularly thereafter to avoid complications during childbirth.
Shutterstock
Early antenatal care allows for early detection of HIV, a contributor to maternal mortality, as well as the treatment of other potentially life-threatening conditions associated with pregnancy.
Hand, foot and mouth disease may not be a public health priority, but parents and caregivers at day-care centres should still be careful about its spread.
Uncollected rubbish provides food and shelter for rodents which can spread plague if they pick up the bacteria.
Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko
In South Africa, female sex workers go for HIV tests, receive counselling and use condoms – but don’t access antiretroviral treatments. More options are now available and can change this.
Understanding what causes diseases is a life-and-death matter. It is a complicated issue that has generated a great deal of debate in the medical community.
There is an urgent need to generate robust evidence that shows how the social determinants of health influence people’s abilities to protect themselves against health risks.
Reuters/Mike Hutchings
Doctors in South Africa have not been doing enough counselling of people who drink, smoke, don’t exercise and eat badly on ways to change their lifestyles.
Professor and Programme Director, SA MRC Centre for Health Economics and Decision Science - PRICELESS SA (Priority Cost Effective Lessons in Systems Strengthening South Africa), University of the Witwatersrand
Senior Researcher, SA MRC Centre for Health Economics and Decision Science, PRICELESS SA, Faculty of Health Sciences, Wits School of Public Health, University of the Witwatersrand