Issued by African National Congress - Parliament
13 May 2003
We start by proclaiming our unequivocal support for the budget before us today.
No one can deny that in the mere space of nine years, the government has brought changes that have completely confounded both friend and foe.
Indeed, we have responded to the challenges of our epoch, that of transforming ourselves from the status of objects of history to that of masters of history.
A true testimony that we are indeed masters of our history is testified by the budget introduced by the Minister of Finance in February 2003, which was hailed by all as the good budget. A budget that put more money to social spending with health getting significant increases.
As the former President, comrade Nelson Mandela stated in 1999 When he said that the profound changes of the past (few years) make the distance traversed seem so short, the end so sudden. No one who is honest can deny that progress has been made in particular in the sphere of health. It might have been prominent in other aspects and hidden in some, however, the point is that progress has been made.
Yesterday, women and children could not access free medical care and at places nearer where they live. Today we boast of the monuments of freedom by the number of clinics and hospitals dotted in the length and breadth of our country. Where it could have taken kilometers to reach, now they are nearby.
Yesterday, some hospitals were dilapidated and in poor state. Today through the Hospital Revitalisation programme we have seen great improvements in hospitals including facelift and refurbishment as well as decentralized management capacity. We have at least two major projects per province to result in brand new state of the art hospitals.
Yesterday, the quality of care and service to the patients were far from being satisfactory. Today we can boast of improvements in this regard through Batho - Pele and Patient Rights Charter and the National Policy on Quality.
These policies are aimed at improving quality of care by giving patients the opportunity to complain about service, strengthens the supervisory system, provides for accreditation of health facilities, provides for peer review.
The national patient complaint system has been strengthened together with the system to monitor conduct of patient satisfaction surveys and implementation of corrective measures. Patients and communities have now mechanisms to ventilate their problems with regard to treatment and service. We will continue to strive for a more caring society and a responsive health system.
Yesterday many children left home hungry and left school hungry thus undermining significantly the capacity to learn and nutritional well-being. Today, the Integrated Nutrition Programme has seen a dramatic jump from R500m to a billion Rands this financial year. There is also strong emphasis on standardized menus and food fortification.
HIV/AIDS continue to present us with serious challenges. It is a challenge the government has grabbed with both hands. We are indeed gratified to see a marked increase in the allocation to Enhanced Response to HIV/AIDS, STIs and TB to the tune of R3,3 billion over the MTEF.
We state the obvious; we base our response on HIV/AIDS on the comprehensive Strategic Plan that addresses prevention, treatment and care, research and human rights.
Our prevention programme is regarded as the best on the continent. Most provinces are now extending the PMTCT programme to more facilities and about 658 hospitals and clinics are now providing these facilities. By the end of 2002, VCT was available in 982 sites throughout the country. 665 HBC facilities have been introduced exceeding the target given by Cabinet of 500 sites by 2002.
The national Department of Health initiated a range of activities to assist provinces in some of these programmes. These included the appointment of coordinators and administrative staff in key programmes of VCT, HBC and PMTCT. Already, 2000 Home-based Carers have been trained nationally as well as 180 master trainers for VCT at 20 per province.
A number of measures are being implemented in the arena of treatment including early and effective treatment of opportunistic infections, strengthening the immune system including improved nutrition, the use of anti-retroviral therapy at appropriate stages of illness. There are measures the government is involved in which are aimed at lowering the cost of treatment including legislative processes.
The clarion call that all of us should respond to- is the need to embrace the call for partnership and lend a caring hand.
The issues we have highlighted here are not new. They are found in government documentation, cabinet statements of the 17th of April 2002 and the 19th of March 2003. These statements are further testimony of the commitment of our government to meeting its obligation.
Many South Africans and some who are not South African, including the President of the UNAIDS and the Executive Director of the Global Fund have hailed our programmes and achievements. Yet among us as South Africans, we treat this as another political football where some of us are prepared to celebrate death as long as it fits a particular agenda.
We watched with awe and curiosity in the alacrity in which certain circles tried to seize on the Human Rights Commission 4th Report on Economic and Social Rights. As is wont, the negative was seized as the defining aspect of the report.
This is not the platform to engage with this report. Allow me to highlight just two aspects of the report.
a) The first shortcoming of this report is that the context is limited to Constitutional aspects of the assessment but falls short of the changing dynamics of South Africa. South Africa of 2000 is different to South Africa of 2003.Thus the report fails to acknowledge this simple fact where the country comes from and progress she continues to make and the way ahead including improvement in the quality of life of especially the poor.
b) On HIV/AIDS, the report seems to confuse the matter of PMTCT and access generally the ARV's in public health institutions. It thus calls on the government to implement the Constitutional Court ruling on Nevirapine, as if this has been a dispute. It calls for more allocation of more resources to HIV/AIDS treatment without examining the totality of the campaign, the comprehensive issue of treatment itself and progressively increasing budgets to this programme.
We have just highlighted the two aspects above due to space and time. We hope that the HRC shall recognize these shortcomings.
We, however, take these shortcomings believing that they were made in the earnest effort of executing its mandate.
There are of course some people who continue to peddle a sustained lie that our government is uncaring and doing nothing in the field of health in general and HIV/AIDS in particular.
We are daily treated to platitudinous refrain that six hundred people die every day. We are treated to an insidious argument that has tended to trivialize human suffering in order to serve egos and nefarious agenda that scavenges on the suffering and death of our people. Some have declared civil disobedience to a government led by a movement that steadily fought for this democracy. People we have listened to as the Portfolio Committee pioneer this campaign.
In this campaign no one is immune. A command is issued to agree with a particular view and any attempt to engage and dialogue is treated with scorn and abuse. Elected representatives of the people are called murderers a serious attack on the very tenet of democracy.
We stand on this podium calling on all those in the struggle for a better health care system to hold hands together for the challenge is huge for any single individual or group to arrogate that responsibility to itself. It is in this struggle that we should respond to the Cabinet call for partnership and holding hands together.
All of us need to put our shoulders to the wheel and lend a carrying hand in the struggle for better health.
The road is still long and complex. The legacy we inherited shall not be eradicated in the mere space of nine years. This is the mess that has taken over three centuries to create.
We never stood on the pavements wailing and crying about this legacy. We rolled up our sleeves and faced the challenge in the same zeal and commitment that we had when we faced the challenge to remove the obnoxious system of Apartheid. We did so united in action.
We are approaching the First Decade of Freedom with a sense of satisfaction and confidence. Satisfied that we have managed in the mere space of nine years to remove the dark clouds of depair and ushered in a season of hope.
Confident that a season of hope has imbued our people with a sense of pride that their organization, the ANC, has remained truthful to them.
There is no organization that exists in South Africa today with policies and programmes that enjoy the accolade of the people in South Africa and the world except the ANC.
We salute the Minister and the Deputy Minister of Health for the excellent execution of their responsibilities. There are still challenges that lie ahead, but we are humbled by the fact indeed the tide has turned.