Candice Andisiwe Sehoma, a young South African activist with Médecins Sans Frontières, has dedicated her career to improving access to affordable medicines and basic sanitation. From building flush toilets in her Alexandra community to challenging pharmaceutical giants on tuberculosis and diabetes treatments, her work highlights ongoing healthcare inequities. Her efforts have secured significant price reductions for life-saving drugs in South Africa.
Candice Andisiwe Sehoma grew up in a single-room home in Alexandra, Johannesburg, until age 18, living with her mother and siblings on the corner of Eighth Avenue and Vincent Tshabalala, still known locally as 'London Road'. The death of her youngest sibling in 2011 profoundly impacted her, fueling a belief that better healthcare could have saved her sister's life—a conviction reinforced when her own daughter faced similar issues, treatable thanks to medical aid.
Educated at Bramley Primary School and Waverly Girls High School, Sehoma experienced stark contrasts between affluent suburbs and her crowded Alexandra yard, questioning societal unfairness. Influenced by the Rose Act Saturday School's community service ethos, she initiated a project in 2012 to replace bucket toilets in her yard. With community contributions and local plumbers, they built two flush toilets by year's end. This success led her to co-found Building Blocks with friends Lukhanyo Nako, Itumeleng Mtebele, and Pearl Ngoasheng, constructing 22 flush toilets across communities while she studied psychology and development studies.
Sehoma joined Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in 2017, entering HIV advocacy amid South Africa's largest ARV program, which had boosted life expectancy from 52 in 2004 to 65. She works in MSF Access, originating from the 1999 Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines funded by MSF's Nobel Peace Prize. Her focus shifted to multidrug-resistant TB, where she spearheaded efforts against Johnson & Johnson's 'evergreening' patents on bedaquiline. By convincing TB survivor Phumeza Tisile to challenge a secondary patent in India, Sehoma helped deny it, prompting J&J to cut bedaquiline prices by over half globally, with a 40% discount for South Africa.
Recently appointed regional adviser for MSF Access in southern and eastern Africa, Sehoma now targets diabetes. On 14 November 2024, World Diabetes Day, she led a 500-person picket outside Novo Nordisk's Johannesburg offices, protesting the discontinuation of insulin pens in favor of profitable GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic. Joined by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), the action highlighted shortages in South Africa's health system. In early 2025, the Competition Commission launched an investigation into Novo Nordisk and Sanofi Aventis, echoing past alliances that began with HIV denialism under President Thabo Mbeki and Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang in the late 1990s.
'I remain incredibly proud of my part in that,' Sehoma said of the bedaquiline victory. Her story reflects a personal commitment: 'Medicines shouldn’t be a luxury,' echoing MSF Access's slogan.