In light of National Oral Health Month in August, we spoke to Dr Linda Greenwall from the Dental Wellness Foundation. Founded by Dr Linda in 2011, the Foundation works in the townships of Cape Town to care for the oral health of many children and elderly people every day. They started supervised tooth-brushing programmes in schools and educare centres, and now look after over 16,000 children in South Africa and over 12,000 in UK, Kenya and Nirobi. The Charity also set up soup kitchens to feed the children in Mfuleni and Khayelitsha at the start of the pandemic and have since continue this worthwhile cause.

Theo Le Roux has been a full time mural artist for the past 18 years – specialising in murals for kids’ rooms. He’s been fortunate enough to be painting murals all over South Africa and traveling to some African states too. He has also worked with NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK for many years, uplifting Children's Homes and underprivileged day-care centres. Recently he painted a new mural at Brooklyn Chest Hospital.

On the Brooklyn Chest Show, Sesethu interviewed Phumeza Tisile about TB Advocacy. In 2010, Phumeza was diagnosed with XDR-TB and against all odds, she was cured in 2013, although she was left deaf. In 2015, she got a once in a lifetime chance to hear again with Cochlear Implants. She is now a Health Activist, student at UCT, and an Advocacy Officer at TB Proof – an organisation that advocates for high quality TB prevention and care. Phumeza presented the first Drug Resistant TB Manifesto at the 67^th World Health Assembly in Geneva which she co-authored. And in 2014 she was awarded the Mail & Guardian 200 Young South Africans in the category DR-TB activist.

We will be chatting today on our registrar show about the importance of a healthy lifestyle and we will be talking to Dr Nxamalo about this topic. Dr Nxamalo is a newly qualified paediatrician from Newcastle in Kwa-Zulu Natal. He loves plants and gardening.

Ntombenhle Ngwane has been working for the SAHRC for the past 10 years and she is currently working as a Project Manager for the Social Harmony National Effort (SHiNE-SA). Ntombenhle holds a Master of Management degree in the field of Public Policy from the University of Witwatersrand. She spoke to Lilah about this National Effort and how it aims to build a more caring society.

With us in studio we had Phumza Jongihlathi from the Two Oceans Aquarium. The Two Oceans Aquarium were at Red Cross Children’s Hospital for Mandela Day 2022, and in this clip Phumza tells us more about this visit.

The social determinants of health are the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age. There are many factors that influence these conditions, and we believe that creating more positive conditions, we can have a healthier and more caring society. Prof Crick Lund, the Co-Director of the Centre for Global Mental Health at King’s College London, and Honorary Professor in the Alan J. Flisher Centre for Public Mental Health at UCT, spoke to us about this topic.

Based at the Children’s Institute, Dr Neziswa Titi holds a PhD in Psychology. She serves in civil and academic societies that focus on protecting children and developing appropriate ways of doing research with and about children in South Africa and internationally. Her research focuses on sexual violence, trauma and the development of mental health interventions for children and young people in Africa through listening to children’s voices.

Many people think that corporal punishment – or hitting children when they misbehave – is a way to set children on the right track and make them a part of a caring society. But in reality, it’s been found that corporal punishment does more harm than good and that it leads to a cycle of violence. To talk to us more about this today, we have Lucy Jamieson, a Senior Researcher at the Children’s Institute. Lucy leads and contributes to a variety of research projects focused on strengthening child protection systems and understanding approaches to reducing violence.