Despite being in charge and control of everything from Taxes, Budget, Finance, Police, Army, Hospitals, Roads, Municipalities, Councils, Parliament, Judiciary, Customs, etc. etc. the black majority government in South has been unable to do anything more than consume the wealth that whites created prior to 1994.
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After a Quarter Century of Black Rule in SA, “Blacks” Still Blame “Whites” For EVERYTHING! When will blacks appropriate accountability, responsibility, duty and honour?
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Making Sense of Medical Aid Rates and Tariffs
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The medical aid industry is known for confounding consumers with all sorts of complex terms. Among the most confusing of all are references to medical aid, or medical scheme, rates.
Schemes and plans are quoted as covering the costs of in-hospital procedures up to 100%, 200% or 300% of the scheme rate or tariff. You might reasonably think this means that medical aid will cover all healthcare expenses, up to 100% or more. However, this is far from the case.
In this article, we focus on medical aid rates, how they’re calculated and what impact the different tariff options have on medical aid members.
The truth about medical tariffs
Medical expenses in South Africa are not regulated. Doctors, specialists and hospitals can charge what they want, provided the fees are deemed to offer “fair value” to the consumer.
The Department of Health has, however, published a list of recommended tariffs pertaining to specific treatments and procedures conducted i
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Limos & spas:- Hlongwa’s role in R1.2b graft
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When he was the Gauteng Health MEC, Brian Hlongwa brought the department to its knees, the Special Investigations Unit has found.
Limousine-chauffeured luxury spa treatments, blatant graft and jobs for cash are just some of the allegedly corrupt activities the ANC’s Gauteng chief whip Brian Hlongwa and his staff were involved in, according to a Special Investigations Unit (SIU) report released today.
The report, which investigates the Gauteng health department’s conduct between 1 January 2006 to 14 May 2010, was handed over to former President Jacob Zuma in March 2017, but never made public. It was only released after public interest law organisation Section27 was able to obtain it via a Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) request.
Hlongwa was Gauteng’s Health MEC from 2006 to 2009.
The SIU found that more than R1.2-billion was lost to graft during his tenure. The 122-page document reveals never-before-seen details about the extent of rot at
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Brian Hlongwa, ANC chief whip, allegedly implicated in R1.2-billion health graft
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When he was the Gauteng Health MEC, Brian Hlongwa brought the department to its knees, the Special Investigations Unit has found. Limousine-chauffeured luxury spa treatments, blatant graft and jobs for cash are just some of the allegedly corrupt activities the ANC’s Gauteng chief whip Brian Hlongwa and his staff were involved in, according to a..
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TECHNOLOGY NEWS:- Students develop diagnosis app for deaf people
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Cost-effective solutions to help deaf people navigate healthcare in developing countries is exactly what Banele Mhlongo and Vuma Mthembu, fourth-year medical students at the University of Cape Town (UCT), are trying to achieve with the app they are developing.
For people who are deaf, dealing with public services such as police stations or healthcare facilities without a sign-language interpreter can be stressful or at worst potentially dangerous. They are less likely to make use of healthcare facilities due to communication barriers, which can lead to an incorrect diagnosis or less than satisfactory treatment options.
The two students believe that communicating with the deaf is a vital aspect to create stronger health systems. Already, there is a strong focus on communication with patients at the UCT Health Science Faculty, where students learn isiXhosa and Afrikaans to ensure that patients can understand and respond to relevant questions when obtaining a medica
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Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a chronic and progressive neurodegenerative brain disorder, read on for more information about PD.
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Parkinson’s disease (PD) which involves the death and malfunction of vital nerve cells in the brain, called neurons. This usually occurs in a part of the brain called the substantia nigra.
It leads to a reduction in a chemical called dopamine in the brain. Dopamine plays a vital role in regulating the movement of the body. A reduction in dopamine is responsible for many of the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.
The disease develops gradually sometimes starting with a barely noticeable tremor in just one hand. The symptoms continue and worsen over time thereby damaging a part of the brain. At the early stage of the Parkinson disease, there is always stiffness of muscles especially in the face or the arms. This will make a person unable to show expressions like smiling, laughing, swinging the arms and will cause slurred speech.
Parkinson’s comes with age. Most people with Parkinson’s start to develop symptoms when they’re over 50, although around 1 in
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Green Tea extract:- SA voted among best in the world
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A highly potent South African green tea extract has been voted among the world’s top new products at one of Europe’s most prestigious natural health trade shows.
Produced in the foothills of the Drakensberg in Mpumalanga and developed by scientists and medical experts, polyphenol-rich Origine 8 was voted as one of the top three out of 330 new health products in the Judges Choice Awards at the Natural & Organic Products Europe trade show (NOPE) in London…
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The winter is on it’s way so keeping the dreaded flu at bay !!
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That influenza, or flu, is merely an indisposition and not that serious is a myth. Graham Anderson, CEO and principal Officer at Profmed says: “The truth is that the flu is actually a relentless and possibly life-threatening disease which kills hundreds of thousands of people worldwide every year.”
Graham says it is also incorrect to believe that the virus is a natural occurrence and that almost everyone should expect to contract the ailment every year.
This flu shot can help keep you from catching the flu. “You can vaccinate against influenza but not the common cold so a person can still experience a cold following a flu shot,” he says.
As a matter of fact, most people are not aware of the distinct difference between a cold and the flu. The flu is caused by different virus types in contrast to a cold. Flu symptoms are usually more intense and sudden, with more serious complications like pneumonia, inflammation of the heart and other bacterial infectio
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Drug Users:- How to reverse overdoses
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Find out how drug users banded together to use a simple injection to save thousands of lives. Alexander Walley was a twentysomething medical student when he witnessed the power of naloxone. It was the midnight shift at the Emergency Department at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.
The call wasn’t unusual: a middle-aged man had been found unconscious after overdosing on heroin. Walley accompanied a pair of paramedics to an ambulance, and they headed out into the cool moonlit night. After five blocks or so they arrived at one of the city’s housing projects and threaded their way across crumbling sidewalks to a shabby apartment in a dimly lit building. Inside, Walley found the man slumped against a wall, blue-skinned and not breathing. “He looked dead,” Walley says, recalling the incident 15 years later.
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The Future:- Climate change will make rice less nutritious, putting millions of the world’s poor at risk
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Rice is the primary food source for more than three billion people around the world. Many are unable to afford a diverse and nutritious diet that includes complete protein, grains, fruits and vegetables. They rely heavily on more affordable cereal crops, including rice, for most of their calories.
My research focuses on health risks associated with climate variability and change. In a recently published study, I worked with scientists from China, Japan, Australia and the United States to assess how the rising carbon dioxide concentrations that are fueling climate change could alter the nutritional value of rice. We conducted field studies in Asia for multiple genetically diverse rice lines, analysing how rising concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere altered levels of protein, micronutrients and B vitamins.
Our data showed for the first time that rice grown at the concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide scientists expect the world to reach by 210
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Climbdown on medical aids
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The Department of Health has done a U-turn on its plan to scrap medical aid schemes, saying they should work with the state when it rolls out National Health Insurance instead.
Department director-general, Precious Matsoso, met leaders of the medical aid plan sector and asked that they work together to reform healthcare in South Africa.
“This is big news,” said Graham Anderson, principal officer of Profmed. The medical aid sector was delighted to be asked to work with the department, because it had been in the dark about NHI for some time, he said.
In the meeting Matsoso made different suggestions on how the government may have to work with the private sector, such as subsidising medical aid options for people who couldn’t afford them.
Finer details of a partnership, however, were not discussed.
Matsoso confirmed the meeting.
She said: “The Department of Health is consulting all stakeholders, private, civil society and labour, to get further inputs [o
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Best and worst medical aids in South Africa.
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The latest GTC Medical Aid Survey for 2016 has been released, which compares local medical aid schemes on price across various levels of cover.
According to the latest General Household Survey from Stats SA, only 17.5% of South Africans are covered by medical aid.
Between 2002 and 2015, individuals who were covered by a medical aid scheme increased from 7.3 million to 9.5 million persons.
According to the Council for Medical Schemes’ Annual Report, released in July 2015, 37.55% of all medical aid costs were in-hospital, followed by 23.51% from specialists of which less than 10% was attributable to out-of-hospital services.
This reflects a total of almost 61% of healthcare costs paid for by medical aids were for in-hospital procedures. Expenditure on all health benefits by medical schemes rose by 11.1% in 2014 to reach R124.1 billion.
The GTC makes an admission that trying to compare medical aid schemes in a comprehensive way is virtually impossible due
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Three things you should know about Three things you should know about rotavirus
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Rotavirus is highly contagious and a common cause of infectious diarrhoea in developing countries. Since children younger than three are worst affected, a paediatrician sheds light on detection, prevention and treatment.
1. Infection
Nausea, vomiting, watery diarrhoea and fever are the most common symptoms of rotavirus. These symptoms usually start one to three days after exposure to the virus and last for an average of eight days.
‘If your family doctor or paediatrician suspects your child has rotavirus, the infection can be confirmed with a stool sample test,’ says Dr Heidi Ackermann, a paediatrician at Mediclinic George. Adults can also contract the virus, but the symptoms are usually much milder.
‘You can also can get the virus more than once, but you won’t get re-infected with the same strain,’ Dr Ackermann adds. Important to note is that although blood in the stools is not a symptom of the virus, it is a symptom that can’t
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‘No money for medicines’ shock – What is going to happen to the patients ???
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Patients’ anti-depressant, anti-anxiety drugs cut – but department denies shortage
State patients needing anti-anxiety drugs or anti-depressants are being turned away from Provincial Hospital’s outpatient clinic and told by the nurses to buy their own drugs or that they do not need pills to stop an anxiety attack.
“I have lost so much weight that I now fit in a size 30 dress,” Cilla Uys, 67, said.
She developed an anxiety disorder after her husband was murdered. “I need my pills.”
Petro Wessels said: “They told me to drink less coffee and exercise more.”
Shelly Strimling, 50, was given a prescription for her anti-depressants on Thursday and told to go and buy the pills herself at the pharmacy. They cost R485.
“There are many others like me,” she said. “I am collecting letters of complaint to take to the Department of Health.”
Strimling has been a state patient for eight months.
When she went to collect her pills at the
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Groote Schuur Hospital and UCT break ground on neuroscience centre
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Work has begun on a state-of-the-art Neuroscience Centre at Groote Schuur Hospital (GSH), which will be the hub for neuro-clinical disciplines at the hospital and University of Cape Town’s neuroscience research programme.
The centre will be home to the newly-established UCT Neuroscience Institute together with the GSH Clinical Neuroscience Centre, where researchers and clinicians will work together to treat the brain and nervous system disorders that burden the South African population.
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“UCT has invested in new interdisciplinary research institutes to address important problems facing our society,” says Dr Max Price, vice-chancellor of UCT. “The Neuroscience Institute is one of these
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