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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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