Parliament, Friday 13 December 2019 – National Assembly Speaker, Ms Thandi Modise, has called on the Southern African Development Community Parliamentary Forum (SADC-PF) members to unite and push through the provision of universal health care for people in the region.
Speaker Modise is currently leading a Parliament delegation to the Southern African Development Community Parliamentary Forum (SADC-PF) 46th Plenary Assembly Session that is being held in Swakopmund, Namibia, from the 11th to the 16th of December 2019.
The Theme of the Symposium is: “Harnessing the power of Parliaments to expand Universal Health Coverage.” The Universal Health Coverage (UHC) is broadly aimed at ensuring that all people receive the health services they need, including health initiatives designed to promote better health (anti-tobacco policies) and prevent illness (vaccinations). It also aims to provide treatment, rehabilitation and palliative care of sufficient quality to be effective while at the same time ensuring that the use of these services does not expose the user to financial hardships. Thus, UHC comprises two main components: quality, essential health service coverage, and financial coverage – both extended to the whole population.
Speaking during today’s session, Speaker Modise said: “The importance of this is that we must recognise that health, unless we address it, will continue to divide our societies. Unequal access to health care is a source of under-development.”
She said one of the first things the democratic government of South Africa did after the 1994 elections, “was to roll out the building of clinics throughout the villages of South Africa, it was to ensure that the elderly have access, especially those with chronic diseases – have access to free medication, it was to ensure that pre-natal services were free to pregnant women.”
However, she said because the people in South Africa are largely still poor and largely still live in places where even those clinics that have been built are not able to cater for everybody, the access to proper health care was still a challenge.
“So, we have now began the process of getting input through public hearings on the NHI. We are debating funding modalities but we are very clear that if we have had our first win of bringing down and almost making sure that child mortality rate is down, we will be able to push for universal health coverage in the country,” she said adding that the process had “been very slowly, sluggishly almost - because of lack of adequate funding.”
She warned that there will be resistance but they must forge ahead in spite of it.
ISSUED BY THE PARLIAMENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA
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