Some healthcare services at Boitumelo Regional Hospital in Kroonstad are hamstrung by construction delays, poor maintenance, and water shortages – despite the hospital being classified as one of the Free State’s ‘ideal hospitals’. Refilwe Mochoari investigates.
National Health Insurance (NHI) was one of the hot topics at the 2022 Public Health Association of South Africa Conference recently held in Durban. While several speakers and attendees expressed support for the principles underpinning NHI, many also expressed reservations. Elri Voigt assesses what the conference told us about the views of some of South Africa’s public health experts on NHI.
South Africa ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities in 2007 – but the data needed to track the implementation of the convention in South Africa is often incomparable across sectors, of low quality, or completely lacking. This limits civil society’s ability to hold the government accountable and makes it impossible to ensure equity for marginalised groups in how government plans, budgets, and implements services, argues Rural Rehab South Africa’s outgoing chair, Maryke Bezuidenhout.
The ideal clinic programme has been one of government’s key healthcare interventions in recent years. An extensive review conducted of the initiative in Gauteng suggests that outcomes are mixed. Elri Voigt reports on findings from four studies on the programme presented at last week’s Public Health Association of South Africa conference in Durban.
There are 83 clinics – down from 153 in 2018/19 – in the Free State with Ideal Clinic status, meaning they have adequate staff, infrastructure, and medicines, among others. For many primary health facilities, this accreditation status is crucial for the National Health Insurance, however, some of these ideal clinics still have various shortcomings. Refilwe Mochoari reports.
On being a member of Parliament, Philip van Staden from the Freedom Front Plus says he is living his childhood dream. Biénne Huisman spoke to him about his career in politics, his thoughts on national health insurance, his passion for the health portfolio, and his time as a member of the Gauteng Legislature after the Life Esidimeni tragedy.
The recent floods in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape showed us how climate change harms people’s health and healthcare services. On the other hand, modern health care systems contribute to climate change through large greenhouse gas emissions. In the development of South Africa’s National Health Insurance system we have an opportunity to address both these sides of the challenge that climate change poses for health systems, argues Dr Louis Reynolds of the People’s Health Movement SA.
In what is expected to become a verbal minefield littered with the usual ideological quips, the members of Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Health this week started the clause-by-clause deliberations on the National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill. Alicestine October assesses the first leg of the deliberations and issues set to pop up in the next round of deliberations, starting with clause 5 of the Bill next week.
Framing the fundamental human right to healthcare as insurance cover opens it up for exploitation. It blocks any possibility of achieving equity in health care. Here Dr Louis Reynolds from the People’s Health Movement of South Africa explains why and how.
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.
One of the great paradoxes in healthcare in South Africa is that, while we have impressive healthcare expertise in the country, most of our provincial health departments are poorly managed. Spotlight editor Marcus Low considers what this means for efforts to build state capacity in general, and for healthcare in particular.
On Wednesday this week, it will be the 25th day of public hearings in Parliament on the National Health Insurance Bill (NHI) since the hearings started in May last year. In Part 2 of this two-part series on the NHI Bill, Alicestine October looks at how far the Bill has come in the legislative process and what to expect in the months ahead.
