Let me start by addressing the philosophical dilemma of the anti-vaxxer’s “freedom to choose”. The need to maintain individual freedoms is the most important mandate of the modern liberal state. Today’s liberal democratic understanding of freedom (with acceptable restraint) was an idea first conceived over 200 years ago. In political philosophy, Jeremy Bentham’s (1789) Utilitarianism…
DetailsA new international trial to assess whether high doses of the antiparasitic drug nitazoxanide could help treat patients with COVID-19 has begun in South Africa. Researchers at the University of Liverpool and Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) are leading the trial as part of the ground-breaking COVID-19 drug testing platform, AGILE. The trial will…
DetailsThe Desmond Tutu Health Foundation (DTHF) and Grassroot Soccer hosted a virtual workshop to jointly disseminate and discuss key findings of the Goals for Girls (G4G) research study. The G4G study evaluated the impact, feasibility, and acceptability of a sport-based, integrated health-promotion intervention, called SKILLZ, seeking to improve sexual and reproductive health outcomes amongst secondary…
DetailsThe Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation greets with great disappointment yesterday’s announcement from Johnson & Johnson and partners that the Imbokodo study, a large-scale HIV vaccine proof-of-concept study (HVTN 705) did not show sufficient levels of efficacy to continue the trial to completion. The results showed that the Adenovirus26-based mosaic vaccine regimen, while safe, did not…
DetailsWomen, specifically young women, are the face of the HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. While women are more likely to test for HIV, more likely to initiate and adhere to treatment, and more likely to have improved HIV outcomes than their male counterparts, they remain disproportionality vulnerable to infection – adolescent girls and young women…
DetailsThe following article was originally published in The Lancet, Vol. 21, Issue 6, on 01 June 2021, by Udani Samarasekera The full article can be accessed using the link below. After medical school, Linda-Gail Bekker was sure she wanted to specialise in geriatrics. Working as a young doctor in a rural hospital in Eshowe,…
DetailsToday is #HIVVacineAwarenessDay – catch up on the latest in the quest for an HIV vaccine with DTHC Director, Prof Linda-Gail Bekker. “What this pandemic has shown us is that these pathogens are formidable” and in some sense they are in control. If we want to regain that control, “we have to be rapid, urgent…
DetailsThis article was originally published on Health-E News on 14 April 2021, by Ndivhuwo Mukwevho. In South Africa, Tuberculosis (TB) affects more men than women. The Desmond Tutu Health Foundation has called for the consideration of men’s voices when designing treatment and prevention programmes. The current ‘one-size-fits all approach’ is not working to adequately…
DetailsWe are excited to announce we are running the 2020 Adolescent Youth Health Policy Online Short Course The course will start on 01 May 2021 Application deadline: 23 April 2021 Developed to support staff or governmental & non-governmental organizations working at national, provincial & district levels, in the implementation of the national policies targeting young…
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