Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa

Media statement   

Thursday, 30 May 2019   

The Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (DENOSA) warmly welcomes the appointments of Dr Zweli Mkhize as the Minister of Health and re-appointment of Dr Joe Phaahla as Deputy Minister respectively. 

DENOSA pledges its full support to the newly-appointed minister, mindful of the many challenges that lie ahead. It has been DENOSA’s position as early as February last year that the previous minister of health, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, had run his full race in the health portfolio and that there was nothing new that he still had with him which could have assisted the department to overcome its many challenges. 

As an organisation, we bid farewell to Dr Motsoaledi whom we believe has given his all in the health department. The progress the country made in becoming the world leader with the biggest ART programme is owed to him, and life expectancy for South Africans has since increased considerably.   

As Dr Mkhize will be occupying the new position, there are key areas that DENOSA believes the minister would need to be assisted greatly on in order to realise a good end-product of quality health service for South Africans, namely:

Implementation of National Health Insurance (NHI):

The minister comes in at a crucial time when NHI is needed as of yesterday in South Africa as a way to bridge the gap between the country’s two healthcare systems and to bring about Universal Healthcare Coverage. 

With the great help and listening ear of the President, especially now that NHI is being driven from the President’s office, there is a need to speed up the process of implementing this concept, starting with dealing with the many backlogs that have been unearthed in the 10 pilot districts as well as the results of inspections of many facilities that were carried out by the Office of Health Standard Compliance, namely infrastructure, equipment, resources, and staffing among others. 

This will be a good starting point, followed by a strong hand in ensuring the systems that are put in place to govern the running of NHI are such that the initial noble intentions of the concept of NHI are not lost.    

Budgetary constraints: 

-       Budgetary constraints in health facilities, in the main, have to do with untracked growing populations as well as unaccounted influx of immigrants to South Africa. In this area, we believe that the minister will face a huge challenge on, and only the President can intervene in this area because Treasury, due to its tight budget limits, may not see the urgency in addressing this for the greater good of the population. 

On the issue of influx of immigrants in South Africa, DENOSA believes that the new minister of Home Affairs, who previously headed the Health portfolio, Dr Motsoaledi, will be very instrumental in assisting the country because the country’s borders have become too porous and this has watered down the quality healthcare service. Minister would know that in one health facility like Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital it is normal that 400 out of 700 deliveries of babies in a month are on foreign nationals, and often many of the patients are without valid permits.   

Overhauling of the Human Resource Development: 

For years it has been known by all people within the Department of Health that there is a greater need to overhaul the Human Resource Development within the department, and the glaring failure to look into this has cost the country thousands of skilled health professionals who now ply their trade either overseas or in the private sector which looks after only 16% of the country’s population, much to the detriment of quality healthcare service for many citizens.

In many instances, health workers are not hired to replace those who have resigned or retired despite the fact that these are funded vacancies. Furthermore, many nurses who have qualified (funded by the state) do not get hired. 

Currently, there is no staff retention strategy that the Department has in place that will keep its skilled workers, and when they leave for greener pastures they are not replaced. The retention strategy that was once there expired seven years ago (nine years ago in the case of nurses) as it should have been reviewed in 2012. Until today this has not been reviewed. 

Way forward: 

Despite these challenges, DENOSA believes strongly that the minister will become effective if he embraces all stakeholders within health as a matter of start. The President’s assistance will be highly required too, because it is a matter of public knowledge that for the past decade or so, funding healthcare services has not been in proportion with the growth of both populations and emergence of diseases, and funding has been diverted to other areas like infrastructure as if funding health is not an investment. 

DENOSA wishes the minister well in this portfolio. 

End 

Issued by the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (DENOSA)

For more information, contact: 

Cassim Lekhoathi, Acting General Secretary: 082 328 9671 

Or 

Simon Hlungwani, DENOSA President: 082 328 9635 

Website: www.denosa.org.za

Facebook: DENOSA National Page 

Twitter: DENOSAORG