The effects of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic on the delivery of maternal and child health services in South Africa.

Objective: The COVID-19 pandemic severely interrupted the functioning of healthcare systems, negatively affecting the global provision of maternal and child health (MCH) services. This study aims to specify the effects of COVID-19 on these services in the Gauteng province (South Africa) and to put forward context-specific recommendations aimed at augmenting them and ensuring ongoing uninterrupted coverage, even and especially during pandemics.

Methods: In this quantitative study, a retrospective review of District Health Information System data routinely collected between February 2019 and March 2021 was conducted, comparing performance of the relevant indicators across the two-year span.

Triple therapy: Three departments collaborating to train medical students in rural settings.

The primary healthcare (PHC) rotation places medical students in rural district hospitals for 4 weeks during their 4th or 5th year. This rotation is a collaboration among three academic units at Stellenbosch University's Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. Learning activities during this rotation include participation in a longitudinal community-oriented primary care project, conducting rehabilitation-oriented home visits to persons with disabilities, and assessing and treating patients presenting with undifferentiated problems on an in- and outpatient basis.

Longitudinal integrated clerkships from start to finish: A medical curriculum innovation.

Stellenbosch University embarked on a renewal of its MBChB programme guided by an updated set of core values developed by the multidisciplinary curriculum task team. These values acknowledged the important role of (among others) context and generalism in the development of our graduates as doctors of the future for South Africa. This report describes the overall direction of the renewed curriculum focusing on two of the innovative educational methods for Family Medicine and Primary Health Care training that enabled us to respond to these considerations.

Exposing an interprofessional class of first years to an underserved community contributed to students' contextualisation of the determinants of health.

Students often find the primarily theoretical, classroom-based teaching of Public Health early on in undergraduate health professions curricula boring, failing to see its relevance for their future careers. An innovative approach to this challenge, based on social constructivist theory, was introduced at a South African university. First-year students were divided into interprofessional groups to visit an underserved community.