Chairperson, as we celebrate International Children's Day, it gives us an opportunity as a nation to assess firstly, how we are prioritising the needs of our children and secondly, how we rise to the challenges facing them. You can always measure a nation's worth by the way it responds to and protects its children.
If I told you that there was a country where nearly one out of every 10 children would die before their fifth birthday, you would be as horrified as I was and find it as completely unacceptable as I did. That is a sickening 138 children dying per day! How many countries can claim that 20 000 babies are stillborn every year? That is 55 per day. A further 22 000 die before they reach their first birthday; that's 60 babies per day. And a further 33 000 babies die before they reach the age of five, that's 23 babies per day.
You would be forgiven if you thought I was reading war time statistics. Unfortunately, hon members, I am not. These are our very own statistics and our very own children. We are not at war with a foreign country, but at war with our own children. To put it mildly, it is totally unacceptable, that a country with the available resources that we have, fails year after year to reduce the infant and child mortality rates.
I found the audacity of the Minister of Science and Technology quite incomprehensible when she stood here and, in her reply to a statement earlier today, said that one of the top priorities for this ANC government was health care. It is not.
I shudder to think what nonpriority is, and the kind of service delivery you are giving to other departments, if this is what you give to health care as a top priority! [Interjections.]
The statistics are reason enough for us to hang our heads in shame. We are about to host the most successful football tournament the world has ever seen, yet we cannot reduce the number of children dying unnecessarily. Why is that happening?
South Africa signed the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Goal Number 4 is to reduce the child mortality rate by two thirds by 2015. Some countries such as Brazil, Mexico and Egypt, had a similar mortality rate to ours in 1990. Now they are on track to meet this goal and have halved their under-five-years mortality rate. That was according to a recent Unicef report.
Conversely, South Africa is among a handful of countries, 12 to be precise, where the child mortality rate has actually increased since 1990. In order for us to achieve our millennium goal in 2015, we would have to achieve an average annual rate of reduction of 14% in infant mortality.
The blame for the rising number of deaths of babies lies with our inadequate health system. If a pregnant mother cannot go to a clinic and expect a nurse to attend to her immediately and to have her quickly transferred to hospital, if she needs it, then our health system is simply not working. A woman in a predominantly rural province, such as the Eastern Cape, has a much higher rate of not having any skilled attendance during birth. The DA is determined to reverse this trend in provinces where we govern.
We will firstly focus on making our hospitals work effectively. [Interjections.] Yes, where we govern. [Interjections.] Our report presented at the Fourth South African HIV/Aids Conference in Durban revealed that between 50% and 60% of all the national Health Department's employees are political appointees, with no management training.
Firstly, the DA will ensure that every person in the health system is appointed on the basis of their skills and experience and not their connections to the ANC, and that they have formal contracts and performance requirements. Secondly, we will find more doctors and nurses so that all our hospitals and clinics can be properly staffed and that a mother can receive attention when she needs it.
We cannot allow the situation where mothers that are in need of immediate medical attention are not afforded such care, due to failed policies by the ANC government; for example, the closing down of nursing colleges without thinking through the consequences of their actions.
The number of doctors graduating from our universities has not increased for over a decade. We will allow private medical schools to be established, so that we can train more doctors. We will remove the barriers that stop doctors and nurses who have trained in other countries from working here.
Another step which was a great success, particularly in the Western Cape, where the DA is governing, was the implementation of the prevention of mother-to-child transmission. Research indicated that currently infant mortality in the Western Cape was approaching levels seen before the advent of the HIV epidemic. This has been achieved through the provision of two antiretroviral drugs to the mother and baby during pregnancy and at delivery of the baby.
The current levels of transmission in the Western Cape are at around 4%, which is the lowest in the country and is expected to decrease further with the triple antiretroviral therapy interventions that we have started as from 1 April. [Interjections.] Are you saying since when? Since we were the first province to roll out anti-retrovirals back in 1999, when we started governing the Western Cape! You as the national ANC tried to prevent us from doing it. [Interjections.]
The DA is determined to reduce infant and child mortality rates; we see it as a gender and human rights issue. In 2010, we should be celebrating our achievements in reducing child deaths, not mourning the ever-increasing baby deaths that we have recently witnessed at the Nelson Mandela Academic Hospital - 180 deaths. It is long overdue that child mortality is placed at the top of the political agenda.
As Members of Parliament, we should be ashamed that so many of our children are dying unnecessarily. If we had the political will, we could do something about this disgrace. I thank you. [Applause.]