Chairperson, the EFF declared 2018 the year of public health. We committed ourselves to visiting all public health institutions across the country, to find out for ourselves the conditions under which public health services are provided. Minister, we found a public health system in distress, suffering from many years of neglect, incompetence and general lack of strategic leadership from the highest office on the land responsible for healthcare.
Just In the Eastern Cape alone, there were 110 health facilities, clinics and hospitals, which were without electricity. Around the country over 600 health facilities had asbestos ceilings, 570 had asbestos roofs and over 116 had asbestos internal walls, exposing
poor, sick South Africans and medical practitioners to long term damaging health risks.
When we asked, our department told us that the department was short of over 18 000 nurses, 2 250 doctors and 154 dentists. This is over and above the total collapse of oncology services in Kwa-Zulu Natal, and general shortage of other specialists across the country. In addition to this, we have poorly trained hospital CEOs, overworked and underpaid doctors and nurses, hospitals without the necessary medication and machinery.
The general state of public health in this country is in crisis. It is in a pervasive state of disrepair exposing poor South Africans to health risks that could otherwise be prevented. While the majority of the poor, predominantly black and Africans, are largely dependent on the disintegrating public health system, a tiny minority of about 16% of the population is well taken care of in the private health sector.
These people, with medical aids can access the best quality healthcare because they have the money to buy health provision. Forty-four percent of all health care spending is concentrated in the private sector, which serves only 16% of the population. The
remaining 84%, those with the largest share of the burden of disease who need the most care, rely almost entirely on the under-resourced and dysfunctional public sector.
As a result of this, there is a huge public inequality; massive unmet health care need in South Africa and a failure to approach anything near Universal Health Coverage through accessible, equitable and effective health care services. This cannot be allowed to continue, and the country as a whole must go back to the drawing board for a social compact to eliminate these discrepancies.
As a matter of urgency, we need to do the following: Outlaw the dual nature of health provision in the country, where the rich can go to private care, while the poor are subjected to poor conditions in public health system. We must develop one quality healthcare system that provides the best possible healthcare to all our people. This must be done through legislating for universal health coverage, under an overarching National Health Insurance framework, that will ensure each and every South African, regardless of the state of wealth, has access to the best medical care in the country.
The roll out of the NHI will be meaningless, and will only amount to posturing if it is not preceded by a massive investment in public
health infrastructural development, in employment and retraining of medical practitioners, in procuring medicine and machines for all public health facilities. There must be a clinic in every ward in South Africa, and all clinics must open 24 hours a day, with nurses and a doctor in each clinic. Our focus on clinics is informed by the belief that the country must focus on primary health with a commitment to attain universal health coverage, with the intention of decreasing infant mortality rates and increasing the life expectancy of all people in South Africa.
We must regularise and fully integrate Community Healthcare Workers as full employees of the state who will be responsible for provision of quality healthcare in each and every community. We must, as a matter of urgency build 24-hour integrated post-sexual trauma centres in all district hospitals for urgent medical, forensic, psychological and social assistance, directly linked to policing and detective directorates.
The majority of South Africans believes in traditional healing methods and must be integrated to the manner public health services are provided. Consequently, each hospital must be equipped with consulting rooms for traditional and indigenous health
practitioners, traditional healers and traditional herbalists to use for free in all district hospitals.
Establishing at least one health care training facility per province and ensuring that there is no province without a medical school. In addition to these issues Minister, you need to commit yourself that all these clinics and hospitals without electricity will be fully electrified within a year. You must commit that your department identifies young South Africans from Grade 10 who will be supported to study medicine and nursing after completing Grade 12. These students must be supported in every possible way.
Despite the 18 000 shortage of nurses around the country, in Lusikisiki in the Eastern Cape, there is a group of over 300 qualified nurses whose studies were funded by the department but who have been unemployed for the past three years. We must all agree that the past decade under Minister Motsoaledi was a complete waste of time for health provision and we must correct that. As a result EFF rejects this Budget Vote 16. [Interjections.]