House Chair, the chairperson of the portfolio committee has gone to great length to explain the purpose of the NAPHISA Bill for instance, monitoring communicable and non-communicable diseases, cancer and promoting co-operation between the republic and other countries to monitor epidemiological surveillance systems. The Bill states that the money will be appropriated by Parliament, fees received for services rendered and income earned on surplus monies deposited and invested.
What the chairperson has not told us is what exactly the cost for establishing this unit or entity is? The Department of Health is in intensive care unit, ICU and bankrupt and they are still expecting billions for the National Health Insurance, NHI, despite Treasury making it quite clear NHI cannot be considered in the current economy. Meanwhile the health ombudsman who is dealing with billions of medical claim is underfunded, understaffed and unable to deal with the workload or to ensure that those who have legitimate claims are compensated.
There is no mention of the role to be played by the Medical Research Council, Centre of Communicable Bill diseases or the Office of Health Standards Compliance, OHSC. They are already well established entities who have a great track record of research, monitoring and dealing with communicable diseases. They need to be included in an appeaseable. We must include them in all of our negotiations.
Finally, the scope of health professionals is vast. There are nurses, doctors, physiotherapists, psychologists, dentists, ophalmics, scientists, allied workers to name just a few. How will every type of health professional be represented on the board or in these units.
We supported the Bill from the outset and we will continue to do so but, be assured we will monitor the establishment of NAPHISA very carefully. There are a lot of unanswered questions and those questions are coming. We expect transparency, we expect honesty and we expect anybody being promoted to these boards as clean, above board and corrupt free. However, we will continue to support the Bill. I thank you.
Ms N N CHIRWA /mN/ fin @ 15:30 on 27/02/2020 / TAKE ENDS AT 15:49