Editorial

Abstract

The first edition of our “Red Journal” for 2023 has arrived. The year is accelerating at a pace, and all agree that we are now firmly in the post pandemic phase and that practice is very busy. The full brunt of the effects of lockdown policy and people avoiding routine care, has led to unprecedented increases in patients seeking care. Data from the US and UK suggests increase rates of new cancer detection on screening endoscopy, that declined massively during COVID. We don’t have such data yet from South Africa, but anecdotally there appears to be a similar trend locally. Compounding this is the disastrous effects of electricity blackouts, colloquially called loadshedding. Our hospitals in which we work are dependent on generators to keep our systems running, this influences costs, felt acutely in the private sector. In the public sector, after much debate (for reasons that are unclear as the exemption seems obvious), hospitals are in the process of being exempted from loadshedding or ringfenced for continuous supply. In essence, 2023 has continued the challenges of the previous year, albeit in a
different guise.