In August 2012 the retired South African paediatrician, Professor Cyril Karabus, was detained as he passed through Dubai airport on his way home from a family wedding in Canada. When I wrote an editorial on this in October last year, I outlined the charges against him. Around that time he was finally freed from the […]
Tag: South Africa
Richard Smith: Healing from apartheid
South Africa is a country scarred by apartheid, and during my week in Cape Town I had a chance to get a sense in my own small and idiosyncratic way of how far healing has progressed. My first experiences were discouraging. I stayed in the Vineyard Hotel at the foot of Table Mountain. It’s as […]
Richard Smith: Managing hypertension in a South African township
South Africa suffers from a “quadruple burden” of disease—infectious disease, particularly AIDS and TB; trauma from road traffic injuries and violence; perinatal and maternal health problems; and non-communicable disease. I thought of this burden as we visited the community clinic in Khayelitsha, the largest “township” in Cape Town. […]
Pat Sidley on South Africa after Mbeki
South Africa’s newly elected president, Mr Kgalemo Mothlante, acted swiftly to end an era of ugly controversy and extreme incompetence in the health ministry by appointing a highly regarded, new health minister and effectively demoting the previous one, Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who implemented all of former president Thabo Mbeki’s eccentric AIDS beliefs, which has laid […]