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Cervical cancer affects more Black women in South Africa than any other race. Why? They mostly use state health facilities which means less screening and delayed surgeries. In this month's Health Beat, we find out why cervical cancer is a political disease and travel to a Tshwane clinic where a nurse is convincing parents to get their girls vaccinated against this type of cancer.

HIV home visits in a Malawi village worked so well that the same visits are not also being used for conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure and cancer.

Pooling funds to cover people’s medical bills makes sense — but only if the funds are managed well. Here’s what actuaries and economists look at when calculating your monthly premium — and what it could mean for the proposed National Health Insurance plan.

The appointments for the heads of two more of the five directorates of the National Health Insurance (NHI) were approved on Monday. These two positions will oversee user and service provider management and healthcare benefits and provider payment design. In the latest episode of Bhekisisa’s monthly TV show, Health Beat, Mia Malan asked the health department’s Nicholas Crisp and Sasha Stevenson from Section27 how the NHI will play out.

Imagine finding out you have cancer but your medical aid won't cover your treatment because of another health condition. This was the case for Louise Turner just as she was starting a new job. Our TV team takes you to see what cancer care looks like in two health systems — one public and one private.

Some small-scale black tobacco farmers in Limpopo feel that the tobacco industry supported them under the guise of an upliftment programme, but then used them to fight against illicit tobacco trade. By 2021, the financial support dried up.

Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital’s radiation waiting list gets longer each year because of too few staff to operate life-saving cancer equipment. This episode of our monthly television show, Health Beat, puts these problems to the health department. Mia Malan asks if the National Health Insurance scheme can fix the country’s broken health system.

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The two-monthly HIV prevention injection, CAB-LA, will be made in South Africa, at the Indian drug company Cipla’s Benoni and Durban plants. But a start date for production hasn’t yet been announced.

The price of insulin in the United States will drop dramatically but people in low-income countries, who spend close to 100% of their income on the life-saving medication, won’t benefit.

In South Africa, a gene test that will tell you if you’re at risk for Alzheimer’s disease costs R3 600. But major organisations warn people against using these home kits without also getting counselling to help them work through the results — regardless of the outcome.

Pharmacy expert Andy Gray is the “insider’s insider” in South Africa’s public health sphere. Get to know him better here.

State health workers will remain cash strapped as the South African government battles to rein in its massive public sector wage bill, which makes up 15% of the goods and services produced in the country.

The health department plans to train professional nurses to prescribe pills for common mental health disorders, according to the final version of South Africa’s new five-year (2023 - 2028) action plan for HIV, tuberculosis (TB) and sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

South Africa’s anti-smoking policies rely on increased sin taxes to cut smoking rates in the country. Experts say this is no longer enough, but people who use government facilities have very few other tools available to help them stop.

There’s no sign that South Africa’s intellectual property laws will change anytime soon, public health experts say. That means pharmaceutical companies will keep abusing the country’s weak system — and keep the profits rolling in.