No vacant posts in Eastern Cape public hospitals and clinics are to be filled until December, according to a departmental circular. The Rural Health Advocacy Project fears that if such measures continue it could have “catastrophic consequences for health care”, especially in the rural areas.
Ashleigh Furlong
News | 9 November 2015
The $20-million partnership between pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and South Africa's Biovac Institute was “the beginning of the establishment of vaccine manufacturing capabilities on the continent”, science and technology minister Naledi Pandor told GroundUp.
Sarah Wild
News | 4 November 2015
On 5 October, GroundUp reported that the pharmaceutical company Sandoz had stopped supplying an essential medicine for treating tuberculosis (TB) to South Africa.
GroundUp Staff
Brief | 2 November 2015
Mineworkers with silicosis and TB will have to wait a while to find out whether they can be represented as a class in legal action for damages against the gold mines which employed them.
Pete Lewis
News | 26 October 2015
If the court did not decide in favour of the gold miners in the silicosis case, hundreds of thousands of sick miners and their families would not be heard, advocates for the mineworkers told the Gauteng High Court yesterday.
Pete Lewis
News | 23 October 2015
Attempts by lawyers for mining giant Anglo American to play the race card in the silicosis case were rebuffed by the South Gauteng High Court yesterday.
Pete Lewis
News | 22 October 2015
Amidst the #FeesMustFall protests, a second #MustFall has emerged and has largely fallen under the radar: #ThePriceOfBreadMustFall. On Tuesday, a group of activists occupied the Shoprite in Khayelitsha Mall demanding lower food prices generally, and bread prices in particular.
Jane Battersby-Lennard
Analysis | 22 October 2015
Mines cannot be held liable for TB, advocates for the gold mines told the South Gauteng High Court yesterday.
Pete Lewis
News | 20 October 2015
Earlier this month, Health-e reported the difficulties of accessing ambulances in rural Eastern Cape. Here we report on how difficult it is to get an ambulance in a township as close as five kilometres from the nearest hospital.
Hancu Louw
Feature | 16 October 2015
Allowing the miners in the landmark silicosis case to act as a class on behalf of other miners would be contrary to the interests of justice, lawyers for the gold mining companies argued yesterday.
Lwandile Fikeni
News | 16 October 2015
Lawyers for the mining companies have begun to set out their case in the South Gauteng High Court, which is hearing an application from mineworkers to be allowed to claim for damages due to exposure to silica dust on behalf of a bigger group of affected mineworkers.
Lwandile Fikeni and GroundUp staff
News | 15 October 2015
Bangumzi Balakazi, from Peddie in the Eastern Cape, was among the former gold miners sitting in the South Gauteng High Court this week as the landmark silicosis court case got underway.
Lwandile Fikeni and GroundUp staff
News | 14 October 2015
Software developed by University of Pretoria researchers could bring cheaper hearing tests to South Africa's rural areas. The hearScreen technology, which has been patented and is in the process of being licensed, can turn any smartphone into an audiometer to test people's hearing.
Sarah Wild
News | 13 October 2015
Many South African women are still resorting to unsafe abortions with illegal providers, often with disastrous implications even though safe legal abortion has been available since 1997.
Thembela Ntongana
Feature | 12 October 2015
In King Leopold’s Ghost, the historian Adam Hochschild uncovers the horrors committed in the Belgian Congo in the years before and after 1900. It is a history of slavery, murder and mutilation – anyone who’s seen the pictures of piles of cut-off hands cannot but be horrified by it.
Marcus Low
Opinion | 9 October 2015
Over the past few years, we have seen an explosion of arguments for and against gay rights in Africa. Those in favour of gay rights point out that they can help to protect sexual minorities by making discrimination illegal, in the process making societies more equitable. Those opposed to gay rights allege that homosexuality only arrived with Europeans, that gay rights are a threat to the African nation, and a threat to the heterosexual family.
Andrew Tucker
Opinion | 6 October 2015