The South African Civil Society Information Service
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
Here's another issue that the market has failed to respond to: "neglected tropical diseases", otherwise known as the diseases of the poorest people in the world.
There are a billion people in the world, many of whom can be found in sub-Saharan Africa, affected by tropical diseases linked to a lack of water and sanitation infrastructure. These diseases caused by worms, parasites and bacteria, disfigure, cripple and often kill people. Only 1% of the drugs that have been...
Saliem Fakir -
Recently I walked into a public hospital and experienced first-hand rudeness and disdain from the staff when enquiring about the whereabouts of an ill friend.
I ask for directions to the emergency ward. I am given a half-hearted answer at the reception. The person’s directions are unhelpful. They are just waves and wild gestures, as if I were a nuisance who arrived at an inconvenient moment. It is as if I never should have asked.
Eventually, I come to a ward.
I ask a...
Glenn Ashton -
South Africa is located at ground zero for HIV and TB. Our health is further impacted by the ravages of poverty and poor diet. When a treatable illness becomes a chronic condition, people cannot work regularly or properly. An unhealthy nation is a dysfunctional nation.
Health is one of the fundamental human rights recognised by both the UN Declaration of Human Rights and by our Constitution. The manner in which this right is constitutionally framed is important, as it not only...
On Tuesday, President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Medicine Act into law, heralding America's first national health insurance scheme. While lauded as a watershed development, the bill lacks a public option, which progressives deem its greatest failure. To call this a victory for healthcare as a human right is a mistake says media critic and journalist, Norman Solomon. "This is as much a victory for corporate America and for exploitation as it is anything...
Fazila Farouk -
Throughout my encounters with the healthcare system, it's been the doctors that have left a lasting impression on me. I've wanted to say something about them for a long time. Long before the well-publicised doctors' strike started. After all, a visit to the doctor is an intensely personal experience.
The thing that I am most struck by is the number of doctors I have access to.
I am not one of those ill-fated South Africans referred to by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in its...
Saliem Fakir -
Julius Malema may have been asked to put the cat amongst the pigeons to test the national waters on the question of the nationalisation of our mines and the general role of a more interventionist state in the national economy.
Since then, there has been a lot of rhetoric going to and fro. Some arguing that nationalisation will lead to disinvestment and job losses.
Fingers have been pointed at the state's incapacity to manage some of its own prized state enterprises, such as the SABC,...
