Thank you, Chairperson. It is very refreshing to have a Minister who is passionate about health and has his finger on the pulse. I have been on the committee for several years and I come from, if I may call them that, the "dark days" when we were on the Health Committee. So, I would say it is really refreshing, hon Minister.
I would like to welcome the appointment of the Deputy Minister. We have not actually formally met, but welcome, Deputy Minister, and we wish you all the best in your position. Also to the director-general, DG, sitting behind me, welcome DG, and congratulations on your appointment to the department.
In last year's budget speech I raised the issue of the dire financial situation many provincial health departments find themselves in. It is still unclear if there has been any improvement in the situation.
We hope that the Minister can shed some light on the matter as to why there is a need for the stabilisation fund, and which provinces will be benefiting from it. We need to know how the situation is being managed, and obviously we need complete transparency in this regard.
Hopefully the chief financial officer, CFO, will now be appointed permanently and not simply act as CFO. I think she has been the acting CFO now for about two or three years, Minister.
Today I will speak on a few of the pandemics the Minister raised in his speech; unfortunately, due to time constraints, I will not be able to touch on all of them.
Our country's Achilles heel is now undoubtedly our shocking child and maternal mortality figures, which the Minister has mentioned. Our inability to save the lives of mothers and children is an indictment of the way we have prioritised the Millennium Development Goals, MDGs, since they were first set some 11 years ago. When one in 10 children will not live to see their fifth birthday, it must surely set the alarm bells ringing, and serious questions need to be asked as to why a country with our infrastructure and budget will in all probability fail to meet our Millennium Development Goals, while countries with far fewer resources have left us wanting, and will reach their goals.
In 1998, our under-5 mortality rate was 59 per 1 000, or 5,9%. In 2010, it rose to 104 per 1 000, or 10,4%. That is a massive 76% increase in the very period when we as a nation were supposed to be working tirelessly towards reducing child mortality and achieving our MDG target. Our target, by the way, is 20 deaths per 1000 - that is 2%. This means that our current child mortality rate is five times higher than it should be!
The situation with regard to maternal mortality is far less certain, simply because 11 years into the MDG programme we still have not determined a uniform measuring tool for maternal mortality. The most obvious course of action would have been back in 2000 to have established how we were going to measure our maternal mortality rate in order for us to track our progress and monitor our interventions. Without a standardised measuring tool one wonders how the government was going to measure with any level of accuracy whether we were on track to meet our goal.
According to our own country's report, our maternal mortality rate has increased from 369 deaths per 100 000 live births in 2001 to 626 deaths per 100 000 in 2007. This is a 70% increase. Our country's target is 38 out of every 100 000 deaths. So, we are currently at 16 times higher than that rate. While the department may dispute the figures in the country's report, saying it is not as high as 626 deaths, we do not know what the actual figure is.
Why are we facing such a dramatic increase in child and maternal mortality rates? When the Minister came before the Portfolio Committee on Health last week - and today he has repeated a lot of what he said to us - it was clear that the department sees HIV/Aids as one of the main reasons for increased child and maternal mortality.
It is evident that the number of people dying in their prime between the ages of 20 and 40 years is increasing year on year, and that the majority of these people are women. In essence, HIV/Aids is a gender-biased disease; it affects more women than men.
The Minister also attributed the doubling of the number of deaths in South Africa over the past decade to Aids and stated that there were roughly 1 000 deaths per day due to HIV/Aids.
Let me be clear when I say this. Individuals must take responsibility for their own health, and remaining HIV-negative is one such responsibility. Similarly, if a person is HIV-positive, then living a healthy lifestyle too is that individual's responsibility.
However, one has to look deeper in order to understand why it was that the HIV pandemic managed to obtain such an iron grip on our country, and why so many people not only became infected, but ignored sound scientific evidence. Unfortunately you do not have to look too far. Do you all remember the decade of denialism? [Interjections.]
HON MEMBERS: Yes!