Health Budget 2024 fails to address poverty-related health issues and build trust for NHI – SAMRC

Posted in: Access to Medicines, Child health, Comment, Latest, NHI, Spotlight

The 2024 national budget offer some glimmers but allocations for direct health benefits fall short of making a difference to people’s health and wellbeing. These include a ring-fenced allocation to crack down on corruption in health to inspire trust for the National Health Insurance, taxing accessories for e-cigarettes, a jacked up child-support grant, clarity on plans dealing with climate change and its impacts on human health, and finally greater investment to enhance women’s capabilities alongside the Covid-19 grant, researchers from the South African Medical Research Council write exclusively for Spotlight.

Health Budget 2024 fails to address poverty-related health issues and build trust for NHI – SAMRC

Opinion: SA can’t afford proposed cuts to HIV funding

Posted in: HIV/AIDS, Latest

National Treasury has proposed a R1 billion cut to HIV funding. This has come about because – rather than seeing the reduced price of antiretroviral treatment as an opportunity to scale up treatment coverage and strengthen other interventions to address the HIV epidemic – the Department of Health has seen it as an opportunity for cost-containment. However, the HIV epidemic is not over and savings owing to cost reductions should not simply be returned to Treasury, argue Matshidiso Lencoasa and Mila Harding.

Opinion: SA can’t afford proposed cuts to HIV funding

Opinion: Health needed a recovery budget, we got the opposite

Posted in: Healthcare system, Latest

For healthcare, a post-pandemic human rights-focused budget would have allocated funding specifically for backlogs in access to health services from the past two years, as well as tackling the present inequities in access to healthcare that characterise the public health system. Tshidi Lencoasa, Khanyisa Mapipa, and Julia Chaskalson argue that this year’s budget does not do enough to enable government to realise people’s fundamental human right to access healthcare.

Opinion: Health needed a recovery budget, we got the opposite

Opinion: Health budget slashed despite vaccine commitments

Posted in: Latest

The national budget tabled this week shows that planned spending on public health is reduced by a massive R50.3 billion over the next three years. We cannot accept a vaccine versus health system trade-off. Government must both expedite the procurement of vaccines and ensure that provinces have the staff and other capabilities to rapidly roll them out and to maintain and improve the quality of healthcare services, argue writers from SECTION27.

Opinion: Health budget slashed despite vaccine commitments

Opinion: Mboweni didn’t deliver on a 20% health promotion levy. Here’s why it is anti-poor.

Posted in: Latest

Every year that National Treasury cannot deliver a health promotion levy of 20%, people in South Africa will die from the diseases that this levy could help prevent. And it is the poorest in South Africa who are the hardest hit, argues Lawrence Mbalati.

Opinion: Mboweni didn’t deliver on a 20% health promotion levy. Here’s why it is anti-poor.

Analysis: What can SA do about the ‘slow violence’ of child hunger and malnutrition?

Posted in: Child health, Latest

The 2020 edition of the South African Child Gauge released last week once again placed the spotlight on the country’s child hunger and nutrition crisis. Various specifics in the new budget being presented in parliament today will tell us how committed government is in addressing this crisis, writes Kathryn Cleary.

Analysis: What can SA do about the ‘slow violence’ of child hunger and malnutrition?

COVID-19: R500bn and the case for procurement reform

Posted in: Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Latest, Provinces, Western Cape

President Cyril Ramaphosa has vowed to act strongly against any corruption and profiteering from the COVID-19 crisis but the systems in place to guard against this may be falling short. Spotlight looked at preliminary spending figures and asked some experts about how public money can be safeguarded during this time.

COVID-19: R500bn and the case for procurement reform

Wastage and negligence hamstrung health services

Posted in: Latest

The Auditor-General (AG) this week once again in his audit report on national and provincial departments painted a bleak picture of wastage and brazen negligence in the public sector. Mismanaged funds in health departments are of particular concern.