Jackson Mthembu’s death drives home the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country.
Health care workers and patients in the temporary outside area Steve Biko Academic Hospital created to screen and treat suspected Covid-19 cases in Pretoria.
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Scientists have observed that 501Y.V2 has quickly become “dominant” among multiple variants that have been circulating in the South African population.
The pervasive impacts of infrastructure projects on public health are often overlooked. New research is teasing out the many ways Melbourne’s level-crossing removals will affect people’s health.
Vaccine hesitancy is a growing public health problem.
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Vaccine hesitancy has resulted in multiple vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks. Research on vaccine hesitancy in South Africa is limited. But growing evidence suggests that it’s becoming a problem.
Fruit and vegetables at a market in Kenya. The WHO is pushing for consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beans, fish and unsaturated fats.
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When a pandemic hits, questions that immediately arise include what impact there will be on public health, the economy and other aspects of society. Another set of questions involves response priorities…
A worker pours dry ice into boxes containing Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.
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From designing vaccine supply chains to improving PPE to rebuilding trust, systematically bringing engineering knowhow to public health problems could make a huge difference.
If South Africa is serious about being able to supply anti-pandemic vaccines in future, it needs to rethink the scale of financial, technical and strategic investment into vaccine production.
Hand hygiene is important to fight COVID-19 but how can you do that without water.
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COVID-19 restrictions created life-threatening challenges to female sex workers as they weren’t able to access their medication, support or their clients.
A healthcare worker fills a syringe with a dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine.
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The African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team recently secured a provisional 270 million vaccine doses for African countries.
This image was taken at the Hawzien market in Tigray, two years before the war which has put millions in need of emergency food assistance.
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The health and wellbeing effects will go beyond the direct impact of war-related fatalities, and are likely to last for years after peace is fully restored.
A 1975 stamp printed in St. Vincent shows U.S. presidents George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who were all vocally pro-inoculation and vaccination.
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In the early years of the United States, several American presidents were in favour of public health inoculation and vaccination strategies.
South Africa’s Minister of Health, Dr Zweli Mkhize (centre). The government has been criticised for not having an actionable plan on vaccines.
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Critics of the South African government argue that it has done too little too late to secure vaccines, and that it doesn’t have a proper plan in place for rollout.
COVAX aims to accelerate the development and manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines and guarantee access to all countries.
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It’s unlikely South Africa will have a substantial number of vaccines until the second half of this year. Most of the vaccines produced in Europe or America have been bought by other countries.
Women who had a secondary or higher level of education were more likely to test for HIV than women who had no formal education.
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Local and national governments in west and central African countries must prioritise investment in providing access to HIV testing for all pregnant women.
Hallways busy with COVID-19 patients have become temporary patient holding areas in overcrowded hospitals.
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States and hospitals are starting to declare ‘crisis standards of care’ as the pandemic floods their ERs. The orders have consequences – both good and bad, as a medical ethicist explains.
Dean Faculty of Health Sciences and Professor of Vaccinology at University of the Witwatersrand; and Director of the SAMRC Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics Research Unit, University of the Witwatersrand
Principal Medical Scientist and Head of Laboratory for Antimalarial Resistance Monitoring and Malaria Operational Research, National Institute for Communicable Diseases
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
Professor of medicine and deputy director of the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre at the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine, University of Cape Town
Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne