Parties table their plans to improve public healthcare

WEEKEND Argus spoke to political parties to find out what their key focus areas would be to improve health care in the province

EFF spokesperson Phiwaba Madokwe said the party had declared 2018 a year of public health and this had been informed by its analysis and peoples’ experiences at public hospitals.

She said the EFF believed the public healthcare system had “turned into a graveyard” and the situation was compounded by overcrowding, a lack of doctors, a lack of nurses, fewer ambulances, old equipment that does not work properly and socio-economic factors that make people vulnerable to diseases and illnesses.

Madokwe said the EFF’s primary aim was to have a national healthcare system that focuses on quality clinics, disease profiling, prevention, promotion and education on healthcare matters.

“EFF has advocated for 24-hour clinics and this is an initiative we strongly believe in. If it is possible to have voting stations in every ward during elections, surely something as important as accessible clinics should not be a problem, that is what our people need the most. In addition to the 24-hour clinic per ward, there should be polyclinics in every village, taking into account how big and remote rural wards are.”

She said the party would roll out an initiative in which doctors and health practitioners visited schools, communities and workplaces regularly to conduct health checks with the aim of early detection and treatment of illnesses.

Under the EFF, community health workers would be incorporated into the healthcare system as full-time employees whose primary responsibilities will be to ensure that communities are healthy and have access.

To address the shortage of doctors and nurses, Madokwe said the party would have one healthcare training facility per province which it believed would increase the number of students sent to Cuba to get medical training and there would be medical missions to other African countries to assess healthcare systems that are thriving for the purpose of benchmarking and rolling out similar approaches in South Africa.

The party also planned to establish consulting rooms for traditional healers so they can be incorporated into the public healthcare system.

Madokwe said the EFF wanted to emphasise that the best approach to the healthcare system is addressing the social ills which have people flocking to healthcare facilities, including landlessness, poverty, patriarchy and the widening inequality in the country.

Good spokesperson Brett Herron said there should be no barriers to health care and that a good government “will prioritise primary healthcare in local communities which can play a critical role to prevent many illnesses and diseases”.

“This will alleviate pressure on state hospitals so that specialist healthcare services can focus more on emergencies and non-preventable diseases. A Good government will ensure the provision of basic national healthcare that can work in conjunction with private health care.”

Herron said the fastest growing item in the national budget is not critical health services or education, but servicing the government’s ballooning debt. He agreed with Madokwe that in order to improve health care, “we need to employ more critical service staff, including nurses and administrative staff at clinics so that we can reduce the queues”.

Good would reduce debt and prioritise spending on more critical services, such as employing more nurses and teachers by making sure state-owned entities are financially independent so that the hundreds of billions in taxpayers’ money that is wasted can be used more effectively for service delivery to citizens.

Good would also prioritise spending on enhanced service delivery in towns and cities:

Herron said in the Western Cape, the StatsSA 2017 Household survey confirmed that the proportion of households without toilets has almost doubled since 2010 (from 2.7% to 4.9%).

He said improved access to sanitation services was critical to improving the health and quality of lives of citizens.

Good would also accelerate the migration to cleaner renewable energy. Air pollution from Eskom is regularly exceeding the required standards and reports indicate that more than 2200 people die each year as a result of respiratory diseases related to Eskom emissions.

Good came out in support of the draft amended Tobacco Bill which seeks to limit exposure of people, especially young children, to cigarettes and smoking.

Herron said too many young people – one in five South Africans, and also one in five teenagers – were smoking. Even worse was that for children under 10 years of age, more than one in 20 have already smoked their first cigarette.

DA Western Cape Campaign spokesperson Daylin Mitchell said since taking office in 2009, the party had built two new district hospitals, 14 new primary healthcare facilities and 11 new ambulance stations and increased the number of substance abuse treatment centres from seven in 2009 to 53 in 2017.

“The Western Cape has the highest life expectancy in the country because we have a functional healthcare system in the Western Cape. But much more needs to be done. We will continue to make progress by,” said Mitchell.

For the DA, its key focus areas are:

• Allocating additional funds to expand and improve tertiary hospitals, including a significant upgrade of Tygerberg Hospital.

• Building partnerships with all stakeholders, including private sector healthcare providers, non-governmental institutions and communities to deliver comprehensive primary healthcare.

• Expanding our investment in the integration of technology to assist in healthcare management;

• Scaling up the single digital patient record system across all provincial healthcare platforms.

• Strengthening and expanding support to substance abusers and palliative care to people with terminal illnesses.

• Refusing to implement the national government’s proposed National Health Insurance programme in the Western Cape.

ANC spokesperson Dennis Cruywagen said the health crisis in the Western Cape is a situation that asks for a multi-dimensional approach.

“We will take a thorough look at hospitals, the state of these institutions, why some of them, like Jooste Hospital on the doorstep of Nyanga station, were closed. We will also have to assess staffing needs and whether hospitals, like Tygerberg Hospital which had a crisis over New Year, have sufficient beds.

“We will also have to examine the state of the equipment. We will also look at the needs of our communities as it’s unacceptable that patients have to start queuing from early morning to ensure that they see a doctor. And while we will look at all of this, we will still have to deliver a good quality service.”