Hounrable Chairperson,
Nurses are on the frontline of healthcare in South Africa and yet government gives them little resources to carry out their duties while they tirelessly serve the South African people.
There is a major shortage of nurses in South Africa, which is worsened by the various challenges nurses face on a daily basis. It should, therefore, be no surprise that various clinics in South Africa are run only by nurses.
Large segments of our population in both rural and urban areas rely on nurses for healthcare and in many rural areas, nurses are the first and only point of contact for healthcare.
A DA government would prioritise the filling of vacant posts and start to address the various inadequacies in relation to the training of nurses on the new Basic Nursing Qualification Programme.
In December 2017 it was revealed that government intends to introduce a new HIV/Aids and TB treatment combination in 2018 that will assist in decreasing the spread of the pandemic. This had been announced by South African National Aids Council (SANAC) chairperson and then Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa at the World Aids Day commemoration.
During the State of Nation Address, President Ramaphosa said that “This year, we will take the next critical steps to eliminate HIV from our midst. By scaling up our testing and treating campaign”.
No HIV treatment and testing campaign have been rolled out as of yet.
The 2018 Global Competitiveness Report shows that South Africa still has the highest number of Tuberculosis incidence out of all the participating countries, this is also coupled with some of the highest prevalence of HIV/Aids. We are also placed in the top 10 worst performers when it comes to
life expectancy.
This shows a failing health system and, we as a country should be ashamed.
Furthermore, the President promised that in the next three months a huge cancer campaign will be launched. As of yet, no campaign has been launched although Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said the campaign would include talking about testing, early detection, prevention and treatment.
Patients, in especially KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng and the Eastern Cape, still have to wait months to receive treatment. In the case of aggressive cancer this a death sentence in many cases. Various machines used for the treatment of patients are still faulty, broken or haven’t been replaced. There
has been no success in addressing the oncology crisis faced by the country.
In addition to this, people are dying queuing in lines at clinics to receive medical attention.
Limited progress with the implementation of the Ideal Clinic programme is a huge concern. The vast majority of South African do not benefit from private healthcare and depend on over-burdened public clinics and health institutions to assist them in times of need.
In a written reply to the DA the Minister of Health admitted that our health facilities struggle to keep appropriate patients records or to retrieve patient files when patients visit health facilities. We have a situation where patients migrate from one health facility to another to receive the same treatment
which was given in a different health facility, a day before, or sometimes even just hours before. The Government can’t even keep proper records. Our entire public health system is in shambles.
Ambulance services remain a major challenge, especially in the deep rural areas. This means that patients have little chance of receiving ambulances in times of emergency. We are denying South Africans their Constitutional rights, Minister.
Our people deserve better and this budget does not address the major failures in the health system. The DA is the only party that can provide the poor and vulnerable with quality health services.