About 60% of participants are found to have high blood pressure. Pensioners in Bushbuckridge, Mpumalanga being screened for hypertension while they wait in line for their grants. The pilot project is by the South African Medical Research Council and SAMRC/WITS’s Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit.

World renowned South African scientists and infectious disease epidemiologists at CAPRISA, Professors Salim and Quarraisha Abdool Karim have been honoured in Vietnam as one of the inaugural recipients of a VinFuture special prize for their ground-breaking research on HIV prevention in South Africa.

Dr Phiwayinkosi Vusi Dludla, a Specialist Scientist within the SAMRC’s Biomedical Research and Innovation Platform (BRIP) has received the Research Excellence Award for Early Career/Emerging Researchers at the recent National Research Foundation (NFR) Awards.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) first reported in Wuhan China in December 2019, is a global pandemic that is threatening the health and wellbeing of people worldwide. To date there have been more than 274 million reported cases and 5.3 million deaths (World Health Organisation 2021). South Africa has borne the brunt of COVID-19 on the African continent, registering in excess of 3 million cases and 90 000 officially reported deaths (National Department of Health 2021).

As South Africa concludes the 16 Days of Activism for No Violence against Women and Children Campaign, three early-career scientists from the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) are already rolling up their sleeves to turn the spotlight on sexual violence and mental health interventions in higher education institutions (HEIs).