Let’s be clear: Our people have no reserves left for another disaster. HIV, tuberculosis, Life Esidimeni, more and more people dying of cancer; diseases that have eaten up our reserves and capacity to respond to a catastrophe. Unemployment has sapped our morale. Hunger is endemic. Our public health systems are all overstretched.
Blog
450 US health experts send open letter to Vice President Pence on ‘Achieving a Fair and Effective response to Covid-19’
There are lessons to be learned from the US, where it appears that the Covid-19 virus may soon be entering an exponential phase of transmission. California has declared a state of emergency, a school district has closed in Seattle and a cluster of cases have been identified in New York City. In days ahead, Covid-19 may spread more rapidly and there are concerns that inequalities in the US, particularly in access to affordable healthcare and medical insurance, may facilitate more rapid transmission than in other developed countries.
Let the children starve?
It is not uncommon to see women, often elderly, with infant children sitting at road intersections begging for money. It’s hard not to be moved by the plight of both woman and child. It’s like witnessing a living, walking, crawling billboard advertising poverty, unemployment and hunger.
Coronavirus: Why protecting human rights matters in epidemics
The danger of a virus that could rapidly spread across the world and potentially kill millions of people has long been warned of. As far back as 1996, the World Health Organisation was warning that 17-million people a year were dying prematurely because of infectious diseases and that ‘at least’ 30 new diseases had emerged in the last 20 years which ‘together threaten the health of hundreds of millions of people’.
Category: Blog
| Tagged: Human rights, Civil society, Feature, Covid-19
Will education trust resolve the crisis?
This week Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga and Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe launched the National Education Collaboration Trust (NECT) and the National Education Council (NEC).
Prove we have a capable state – build safe toilets in schools
State capture threatens the right to health
In 2017, a debate raged at the Treatment Action Campaign’s (TAC) National Congress about how to respond to corruption across the country. As the levels of scandal and shock around President Jacob Zuma’s behaviour have risen, TAC’s allies have often called on it to take to the streets and join organisations such as the Save South Africa campaign that are calling for Zuma to step down.
Corruption has created its own political economy
On the edges of Dieplsoot stands a half complete municipal building. Once intended as a library and offices, it has been surrendered to decay before it even came to life. A few years ago it seemed to symbolise a governmental intent to recognise and modernise Diepsloot. Now it’s just an unexplained shell. A free brick and building parts store.
The end of AIDS? Not even close
According to UNAIDS, this World AIDS Day will be the first time that we can celebrate the possibility of the eradication of HIV, and therefore AIDS, in the foreseeable future.
Prejudice Mars China’s AIDS Record
China will observe World AIDS Day on Thursday with events in which Chinese leaders publicly embrace people living with HIV/AIDS. But on every other day of the year, hundreds of thousands of Chinese living with HIV/AIDS are treated as second-class citizens.