Revolutionary greetings to the commander in chief of the EFF, Julius Sello Malema, the deputy president, Floyd Shivambu, commissars and ground forces of the EFF.
Tuberculosis remains one of the number one killers claiming
68 000 lives lost in South Africa in 2018 alone. As a country we should have exited the phase of stagnant decrease of TB deaths but we unfortunately are burdened with a government that gloats about healing sick people than preventing deaths.
The EFF emphasises, once again, the importance of primary healthcare and prevention. It seems this government is accustomed to panic once too many lives are already lost. This is nothing new under the ANC-led government. We saw what happened during the HIV and Aids denialism during Thabo Mbeki's occupancy as President. The repercussions of this attitude still reverberate for millions to this day.
This government also has a tendency to hide its inability to deliver services by blaming foreign nationals when we, in fact, are one of the top 11 countries in the world with the highest number of our citizens leaving our country for other countries. This attitude not only creates fertile ground for
xenophobia by South Africans but also exposes South Africans in other countries to xenophobic attacks in the future.
For years civil society has been begging the ANC-led government to give support to those with HIV and TB, and you have thoroughly ignored these cries. This is because they come from the trenches of the poor.
Our people know that TB is preventable and curable. Our people want to take their medication but our people are hungry. The number one cause for defaulting patients is poverty and lack of patient-centred care.
Give our people land so they can farm and feed themselves; jobs so they can nurture themselves; and clean water to stay healthy. Our TB crisis is, in fact, a crisis of landlessness, dispossession, unemployment and poverty.
Mpumalanga is one of the highest air pollution areas globally, and workers, ordinary citizens and pregnant women experience a direct implication by being prone to respiratory diseases like tuberculosis. The Minister has done nothing about this even after our recommendations in the past year.
Exploitation of mine workers, which in majority are black men, by mining companies who steal our minerals, and failure of the ANC to normalise health care for men in the mining industry is a form of gender based violence against men.
The country is sitting at 17 infections of coronavirus which is declared a global concern and yet, in South Africa, research and information dissemination is lacking on how coronavirus will affect people with tuberculosis and HIV, and measures taken in this regard.
In 2014 following the Ebola outbreaks, travel bans against three African countries were instituted when we had zero infections. This has not been done in response to coronavirus global outbreak when we are sitting at 17 infections over a few days.
The EFF proposes the following to the Minister of hospitals since we do not have a health system in this country.
The Sixth Parliament should finalise the National Health Amendment Bill to ensure clinics are open 24 hours.
The overall target in South Africa should be that no citizen should go three months without a medical check-up. Regular checkups should be linked to other social services such as collection of social grants.
Every clinic must provide patients with chronic illnesses with groceries. These services must be linked to auxiliary social worker services.
The department must build and resource science centres in townships and rural areas and do mass programs on normalising healthcare for men in taxi ranks, train stations and popular hangout places for young people.
The department must release funding to creating an environmental and scientific cohort that will highlight high risk areas for easy transmissions and infections.
The Minister must ensure the sustenance of specialised TB facilities instead of leaving vulnerable patients destitute like you have done in Port Elizabeth, Empilweni TB Hospital.
The department must hold mining companies accountable through monetary penalties and strip them of licensing for depriving mine workers of health surety and exposing them to unsafe labour with which is guaranteed to leave them dying from silicosis and prone to contracting and spreading tuberculosis ... Prevention, education, primary Healthcare.
You have demonstrated to South Africa in your 26 years of governance that a respiratory disease has more power over you by failing to conquer tuberculosis which is preventable and curable. If you can't learn from us, at least learn from your own failures, and for once, be a proactive and not reactive government. I thank you. [Applause.]
IsiXhosa: