Receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis in your early 50s is frightening. It is difficult to imagine what Mario Ambrosini is going through. That he wishes to beat cancer and that he is disappointed with medical science because it offers him so little hope is entirely understandable.
Nathan Geffen, GroundUp Editor
Opinion | 4 November 2013
Instead of fulfilling its vision to “enhance the quality of health”, the Health Professions Council (HPCSA) tried to stop details of the health crisis in the Eastern Cape being made public.
GroundUp Staff
News | 4 November 2013
The Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) is a statutory body that regulates health workers. It registers doctors and disciplines them if they do something wrong. If it had to perform its tasks properly, patients would benefit. Instead, according to several organisations and doctors, the HPCSA’s inefficiency hurts patients.
Delphine Pedeboy and GroundUp Staff
News | 30 October 2013
Nancy Muzembe, originally from Zimbabwe, struggles against all the odds to give her son a good education.
Tariro Washinyira
News | 29 October 2013
Lindiwe Kameni was ill in 2004. “I was in Jo’burg when I fell sick, and I tested HIV-positive”, she says. She told her husband her HIV status and things started to change.
Odwa Funeka
News | 28 October 2013
“It hurts when people call me mad,” says Luvo Ndinisa. “I asked people from my community to stop calling me mad.”
Nwabisa Pondoyi
News | 28 October 2013
It is in the interests of large multinational companies to secure as many patents as possible. The Treatment Action Campaign, in line with the Draft National Policy on Intellectual Property (IP), argues that patents should only be granted for medicines that are truly new and innovative, for example a brand new cancer cure.
Marcus Low
Opinion | 24 October 2013
Thousands of people in South Africa have drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB). Many of them will die. Death from TB can be slow and horrible. Many of those who do survive will struggle with severe side effects and may need daily pills and injections. Some, like 23-year old Phumeza who described her experience of TB treatment at a Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) press conference last week, will live, but lose their hearing.
Marcus Low
Opinion | 24 October 2013
While antiretroviral drugs against HIV are getting more effective and allow HIV-positive people to live longer, the ultimate prize is to find a way to cure people of the virus, the best hope being a vaccine.
Kerry Gordon
News | 9 October 2013
On October 4, Rustenburg Girls Junior School celebrated two of its teachers who have survived breast cancer by hosting two fundraising events to raise funds for cancer awareness.
Nwabisa Pondoyi
Brief | 7 October 2013
It caused a controversy last year, leaving many people wondering how exactly it would work. But what was supposed to be the closure and reconstruction of GF Jooste Hospital this year, will now only happen in 2018.
Mary-Anne Gontsana
News | 1 October 2013
Since the Peninsula School Feeding Association (PSFA) lost a tender by the Department of Education’s National School Nutrition Programme to deliver a school feeding service, two schools are complaining that the service has decreased, and learners are hungry.
Mary-Anne Gontsana
News | 26 September 2013
The matter against the twenty-one Social Justice Coalition (SJC) activists, who took part in a civil disobedience action last week, has been postponed to 23 October 2013. The 21 activists appeared before the Cape Town Magistrates’ Court this morning.
Sibusiso Tshabalala
Brief | 18 September 2013
On 18 September 2013, twenty-one Social Justice Coalition activists will appear in the Cape Town Magistrate court for contravening provisions of the Regulation of Gatherings Act.
Sibusiso Tshabalala
Opinion | 18 September 2013
The Neil Aggett Memorial lecture was delivered by Jay Naidoo at Kingswood College, Grahamstown on 13 September 2013.
Jay Naidoo
Opinion | 17 September 2013
“We demand accountable leadership”, “Failure to resolve stock-outs = human rights violation”, “Limpopo Department of Health – Failed promises” read placards at the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) march in solidarity with provinces that continue to be plagued by finding essential medicines are out of stock.
Mary-Anne Gontsana
News | 16 September 2013