Janet Seggie

Bioethics, Human Rights and Health Law. Principles and Practice

Issues related to ethics, law and human rights enter into the everyday work of medicine and the health sciences. Almost daily we encounter scenarios that raise ethical concerns - from laboratory work on stored human tissue, or interactions between health care providers and patients, to the shape of policies and programmes to deliver services to populations.

Alcohol and South Africa's Youth

South Africa (SA) is a hard drinking country. It is reckoned that we consume in excess of 5 billion litres of alcohol annually; this figure is likely to be higher still if sorghum beer is included, and equates to 9 - 10 litres of pure alcohol per person. According to a World Health Organization (WHO) report released in 2011, this is among the highest per capita consumption rates in the world, and it is continuing to rise.

Use of a structured interview to assess portfolio-based learning.

Context  Portfolio‐based learning is a popular educational tool usually examined by document review which is sometimes accompanied by an oral examination. This labour‐intensive assessment method prohibits its use in the resource‐constrained settings typical of developing countries.

Strike a woman, you strike a rock: A tribute to (two) Nurses

South Africa recently lost a valiant woman, who was a nurse. The above quotations, attributed to Florence Nightingale, the founder of the nursing profession, might equally well have been uttered by Ma Albertina Sisulu.

MB ChB curriculum modernization in South Africa - growing doctors for Africa

Over the past two decades, all eight South African medical schools (see Map (Fig. 1) and Table I) have undertaken renewal of their MB ChB educational programmes. As I write this in mid-2010, all programmes are settled and have been accredited by the Undergraduate Education and Training Committee of the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA).

The job chooses the (wo)man

Some 1 200 - 1 300 new doctors have just graduated in South Africa. They will have begun their internships and in a years time will commence their Community Service posts. Their thoughts will turn to their future occupations and to their choice of specialisation, including general practice or family medicine.

Human resource challenges in healthcare delivery in African communities : editorial

This edition showcases work from South Africa, but having relevance to the African continent as a whole. The papers concerned serendipitously all have the same theme - that of addressing the human resource challenges in healthcare delivery in African communities

'No more whispers' - 30 years of HIV/AIDS and 10 years of HIV treatment in South Africa.

1held in Durban in June. The conference brought together clinical scientists, basic scientists, educators and learners, law and human rights experts, practitioners (doctors, nurses, community carers), community workers, NGOs, members of civil society and lay members of so-called key populations (e.g. sex workers), pharmaceutical industry representatives, people from the world of work, politicians and policy makers. June 2011 marked the 30th anniversary of the recognition of the pandemic, then manifesting in New York as outbreaks among the gay population of Kaposi’s sarcoma and pneumocystis pneumonia in ostensibly healthy young men. A year later the Centers for Disease Control coined the term ‘acquired immune deficiency syndrome’ – AIDS. A soaring death rate led to a scramble to identify the cause. Assigning credit for the discovery of HIV was controversial, but it is agreed that Robert Gallo, a ‘retrovirologist’ at the National Cancer Institute, Maryland, Luc Montagnier and their research groups contributed significantly. Montagnier’s group first isolated HIV, while Gallo’s group demonstrated that the virus causes AIDS and generated much of the science that made the discovery possible, including a technique previously developed by Gallo’s laboratory for growing T cells in the lab. 2 There have since been breathtaking scientific advances, and understanding of the virus’s structure, mode of replication and targeting of the immune system have led to the development of drug therapy to restore immunity, although not yet to cure infection, and tools and methods to limit transmission. South Africa has proved particularly vulnerable. While having 0.7% of the world population we carry 17% of the global HIV burden, and 1 out of every 100 South Africans has tuberculosis. The Durban conference celebrated the enormous continuing contributions by South African professional and lay health communities. Our scientists and practitioners have played pivotal roles in the field, many reported in this journal and its sister, the South African Journal of HIV Medicine. The dark days of denialism have ended and reduction of a vicious epidemic is envisioned on the back of the National Department of Health’s Strategic Priority Framework for the New HIV/STI and TB National Strategic Plan and New Primary Healthcare Revitalisation Programme. The health system’s robust new approach encompasses a massive HIV counselling and testing (test one – test all) campaign, antiretroviral (ARV) treatment and expansion of medical male circumcision. 3