According to a Business Day news report by Edward West (SA students set to study medicine in Cuba, 6 Jan), “Students from South Africa will be allowed to study medicine in Cuba while paying their ...

The deadline for submissions on the draft National Health Insurance (NHI) Green Paper is history. South Africa’s healthcare policy is at a critical crossroad as we await government’s response to the views expressed by the ...

For most of human history, life was nasty, brutish and short. If you wanted something from your ‘neighbour’ you simply took it – with force if necessary. With no laws to guard the fruits of ...

SADC Ministers of Health met in Limpopo on Friday November 11th to commemorate SADC Malaria Day and raise the profile of the disease. The theme of this year’s event was, “Be free of Malaria in ...

The new US health reform law creates incentives for state and federal politicians and bureaucrats to exert direct control over ...

The second Africa-India Forum Summit will be held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in a two day event between 24 and 25 May and will set the stage for ongoing co-operation between the sub continent and ...

A legal battle is in progress between the Board of Healthcare Funders (BHF) and the Council for Medical Schemes (CMS). At the heart of the dispute are PMBs (prescribed minimum benefits) and how medical schemes ...

U.S. companies have led the world in the development of medical devices. According to an analysis by the consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, 32 of the 46 medical technology companies with annual sales exceeding $1 billion are ...

A few years ago, Britain's National Health Service (NHS) first considered refusing to treat obese people for lifestyle-related illnesses. In the same vein, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), the NHS's guidance ...

In her article NHS as State Failure: Lessons from the Reality of Nationalised Health Care, published in the December 2008 issue of Economic Affairs, Helen Evans, the Director of Nurses for Reform in the UK, ...

Some people are trying to make us believe that a tax deduction is the same as a subsidy and that is why scrapping tax deductions on medical aid contributions is one of the considerations for ...

SHOULD you ever be seized by an inexplicable moment of masochism, a visit to Cecilia Makiwane Hospital in East London will serve your ends. During a recent visit to the hospital, I was met with ...

Imagine a medicine that has saved tens of millions of lives consistently for decades. Imagine that it is still being used highly successfully – yet, many people wish to see it taken out of use ...

A task of economics is to explain the forces that affect human decision-making and a key element of economic theory is that incentives matter.

When incentives change, peoples’ behaviour also changes. For example: your boss ...

According to recent media reports, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi is proposing a cap on the fees doctors and hospitals in the private healthcare sector can charge their patients. If Dr Motsoaledi has been consulting specialists ...

April 25 is World Malaria Day. It is a day for everyone to learn more about this devastating disease, which has plagued humankind since the beginning of recorded history and continues to be a significant ...

Articles and speeches about rising healthcare costs are becoming more frequent. Witch-hunts to identify who among the providers of health care are the main culprits follow. Who is it that cruelly seeks to make excessive ...

An enthralling tussle recently unfolded on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. A Republican, Scott Brown, won the Massachusetts’ Senate election, giving his party enough seats in the Senate to block President Obama’s and ...

A consignment of fake anti-malaria drugs worth an estimated N10 million (approximately R500,000) was seized recently by the Nigerian National Agency of Food and Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC).

Fake drugs do not cure patients’ ...

The reality of life on our planet is that resources are limited but the wants of people virtually unlimited. Because we cannot have as much of everything as we would like, we are forced to ...

In a few years, South Africa is going to have a greater number of older people as a proportion of the total population. This means that there will be a much higher instance of chronic ...

Incremental improvements are the best route to health reform. Many positive steps have a better chance of succeeding than a single giant leap, which could prove disastrous if wrong. All the signs indicate that government ...

Pretoria University’s Department of Urology recently released a study headed by Dr. Riana Bornman purporting that there is a link between an insecticide used for malaria control, commonly known as DDT, and urogenital birth defects ...

In SA, individuals pay a substantial amount of the money spent on health care. They do so either directly, through medical schemes, or through their employers, a sure indication that there is a strong demand ...

DDT, one of the most studied insecticides, has again come under attack. In May 2009, Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP) published The Pine River Statement: Human Health Consequences of DDT Use. This Statement, authored by 15 ...

No single person has a complete understanding of the SA health care system. Anyone who believes they do, suffers from what Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek described as a ‘fatal conceit’.

Policy makers world-wide have made the ...

Populists gather support for unjust proposals by maintaining that everyone has a ‘right’ to benefits such as housing, food, water, clothing, education, social security, and medical treatment. But nothing is free. Every so-called ...

More and more studies are revealing the shocking trade in fake and substandard medicines across the globe. These drugs result in millions of people unwittingly consuming all manner of content from talcum powder, to sawdust ...

At the centre of President Barack Obama’s budget is a $634 billion “reserve fund” to help policy-makers achieve comprehensive health care reform. But money alone can’t fix a ...

Many infants in poor and middle-income countries get their vaccines weeks later than doctors recommend and therefore face increased risks of sickness and death, according to a new study in the Lancet.

Globally, vaccination rates have ...

Recent evidence from the Thai-Cambodia border demonstrates that the malaria parasite is becoming increasingly resistant to our most effective anti-malaria medication – artemisinin. But this is not the first time that a once highly effective ...

Ontario patients undergoing coronary artery bypass graft surgery could have reduced their risk of dying by having it performed in any one of 27 ...

Everyone in SA would like to see the entire population healthy, well nourished, well clothed, well educated, living in nice houses and with all adults earning above-average incomes. Life would be much more pleasant for ...

Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown has caused a number of preventable and curable diseases to run rampant, claiming lives needlessly. Basic services have been neglected and precautionary measures to prevent the outbreak of diseases such as cholera ...

New European Union pesticide legislation was passed this week with the goal of protecting human health and the environment in Europe.  On first inspection one may think that this is a positive step, since there ...

The annual South African Development Community (SADC) malaria day was held on 14 November. Health ministers attending the commemorations descended on the small town of Jozini in northern KwaZulu-Natal to raise awareness of the risks ...

A well-functioning socialised (public) health system has never existed. The socialised health systems of wealthy countries such as Great Britain, Sweden and Canada battle with escalating costs, limited funding, waiting lists, ration care, and restrict ...

South Africa’s chronic shortage of skilled health care professionals continues unabated and the situation worsens by the day. It is therefore unfortunate and inappropriate that the Department of Health continues to restrict the supply of ...

Governments can promise free health care but they cannot deliver it, nor can they ensure that the country’s people will be healthy. They cannot deliver “free” health care because there is no such thing – ...

According to press statements, the government is being urged to adopt a radical form of national health insurance (NHI) that makes medical insurance compulsory, outlaws private medical schemes, and places the management of all health ...

The UN convened last week in New York to discuss its Millennium Development Goals and the aim of "ending poverty by 2015." Delegates and a rock star ...

While SA heads determinedly towards a disastrous state-dominated health care system, Singapore heads even more determinedly in the opposite direction.
 
At independence in 1965 the port city-state of Singapore took over a health ...

In the last week of July the malaria community from the East and Southern Africa regions came together in Lusaka, Zambia for their annual planning and review meeting. This important meeting provides a forum to ...

As the G8 gathers in Hokkaido, leaders will pledge billions more aid for health in Africa – despite the fact that previous aid has had almost no impact.

Prices for generic prescription drugs in Canada are more than twice as high as those in the United States according to a new study from ...

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Top-notch policy experts from around the world gathered to make formal policy recommendations about patents to Third World governments struggling with disease. Many will claim that patents allow Western drug companies to keep drug prices ...

April 25 has this year been declared World Malaria Day. Since 2001, April 25 has been observed as Africa Malaria Day, commemorating the signing of the historic Abuja Declaration by 44 African malaria-endemic countries at ...

Activists have been trying for years to bring down the pharmaceutical industry.  Their “patients not patents” campaign has a simplistic appeal but will only make things worse for the poor, as well as distracting attention ...

Anti-globalisation protestors were again positioned outside the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, supposedly acting on behalf of the world’s poor. History, though, has demonstrated that the best way to move from poverty to ...

There is a curious tussle currently unfolding between the South African government and the private sector regarding private hospitals’ proposed price increases for 2008. Recently, SA’s minister of health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said ...

Earlier this month, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) commemorated the annual SADC malaria day, which occurs on the ...

Health care policy in South Africa emphasises the role of the public sector in providing healthcare almost to the detriment and exclusion of the private sector. The Minister of Health in ...

The crisis in Zimbabwe has long since reached epic proportions and the situation worsens by the day. Millions of Zimbabweans have fled their country, seeking asylum in neighbouring countries but are ...

While closed pharmacies, and especially community pharmacies, are the first visible casualties of government intervention in healthcare pricing, costly consequences of other healthcare regulations are no less harmful to the long-term interests of patients.

The underlying ...

SA continues to suffer from a chronic shortage of skilled health care professionals. This threatens the ability of health ...

A theme among left-of-centre polemicists, when writing on health care, seems to assume that the poor get better health care when they live in nations with government-run systems, says Amy Ridenour, president of the National ...

When allowed to work, the market is a powerful tool. It brings lower prices and innovation. But that will be disrupted should Washington "negotiate" price controls for Medicare patients, says Investor's Business Daily (IBD).

According to ...

The Canadian government's spending on health care has grown faster than its ability to pay, says a new report from the Fraser Institute.

"Since virtually day one, public health insurance costs have grown at an unsustainable ...

to be ...