Thank you, Chairperson. Minister Aaron Motsoaledi, hon members of the House, let me start by congratulating all government departments, Fifa and the Local Organising Committee on hosting an extremely successful Confederations Cup. Let me also congratulate Bafana Bafana, who have made us very proud. They have improved their game. They have played well.
Now that the Fifa Confederations Cup is behind us, we can pause and reflect on how the health system met its obligations in the provision of health and medical services for the tournament. In general, the provision of these services is considered successful, and the detailed planning and preparations that took place has resulted in an incident-free tournament. However, there are also areas where we believe that we can improve. A thorough debrief will take place in the middle of July 2009. Lessons learnt will be carried forward as we begin to prepare for the 2010 Fifa World Cup.
With the World Cup involving 10 stadia, as opposed to the four used for the Confederations Cup, now is not the time to rest on our laurels. The Health Sector Preparations Workgroup will critically revisit its plans in minute detail to ensure that all aspects are suitably prepared for.
The World Health Organisation, working together with the department, sent a nine-member delegation of experts in communicable diseases and mass gatherings to South Africa to evaluate the implementation of communicable disease control strategies during the Confederations Cup. This team commended us for the good work that was done. It also left us with minor recommendations.
The first identified case of swine flu in South Africa occurred during the visit of the WHO delegation. It provided the delegation the opportunity to observe first-hand how we, as a country, dealt with such an incident. The reports received were positive. The delegation gave us the assurance that they would continue to support our efforts to ensure that we have a 2010 tournament that is free of any disease outbreak. To this end exchange and training programmes will take place over the next 10 months.
I am confident as I stand here today that we will be able to tell the nation in April 2010 that the Department of Health, along with its partners, are fully prepared to ensure that we are more than adequately ready for the 2010 Fifa World Cup.
Let me now turn to the priority issue of improving quality of care. Our patients and their families, and the communities they come from, are the most important voices that we will be listening to during this year as we move towards implementing more equitable and higher quality care through health systems strengthening. We will also continue the recent successful efforts to work with our own staff and the many partners who are passionate about improving the quality of care in our country. We will formalise some of these relationships by appointing a number of our recognised experts to advise us on accepted best practices on an ongoing basis.
Since starting work last year, the Office of Standards Compliance has already initiated the process of reviewing and benchmarking performance against national standards in a number of hospitals and community health centres. This was followed by support to improve identified areas of weakness.
Hon Chairperson, hon Mpontshane is sleeping while I am speaking.