Product Description
One of the amazing things about public health care in South Africa is how dedicated professionals are able to stick it out under appalling conditions many employees would simply not tolerate. These include poor pay and excessive working hours, never mind the corruption and mismanagement that seem so prevalent. The very high levels of trauma in this violent society, along with abnormally high mortality levels thanks to AIDS and tuberculosis, must make working in most of our public hospitals among the most gruelling jobs in public health care anywhere outside war zones and disaster areas. Yet complicated surgery is successfully performed and lives saved.
The other side of the public health care story is the never-ending reports of yet more preventable deaths of infants and mothers — the tip of an iceberg of the failings of public health care. For most people who have to rely on it, public health care is probably now worse than it was under National Party rule. TheWorld Health Organisation some years ago found that our public health care system was one of the worst in the world. Yet the Government responsible for public health care now wishes to introduce some sort of national health insurance system.
The details are murky, but it appears that neither the financial nor the human-resource implications have been properly considered, let alone the technical and managerial capacity of a failing state. There are four great risks in what the African National Congress (ANC) and the Government seem to have in mind. One is that further interference in the private health care sector will damage that sector without fixing the failings of the public sector. The second is that we will lose one of the advantages South Africa can offer to skilled immigrants, which is a top-quality private health care system.
The third is that we will encourage emigration of our own health care professionals. The fourth is that some of our private hospital groups will devote more resources to foreign acquisitions than to expansion in South Africa. What the Government needs to do to improve public health care in South Africa is to reduce the role of the State and expand that of the private sector—including private medical insurance — not the other way around.
- John Kane-Berman
The other side of the public health care story is the never-ending reports of yet more preventable deaths of infants and mothers — the tip of an iceberg of the failings of public health care. For most people who have to rely on it, public health care is probably now worse than it was under National Party rule. TheWorld Health Organisation some years ago found that our public health care system was one of the worst in the world. Yet the Government responsible for public health care now wishes to introduce some sort of national health insurance system.
The details are murky, but it appears that neither the financial nor the human-resource implications have been properly considered, let alone the technical and managerial capacity of a failing state. There are four great risks in what the African National Congress (ANC) and the Government seem to have in mind. One is that further interference in the private health care sector will damage that sector without fixing the failings of the public sector. The second is that we will lose one of the advantages South Africa can offer to skilled immigrants, which is a top-quality private health care system.
The third is that we will encourage emigration of our own health care professionals. The fourth is that some of our private hospital groups will devote more resources to foreign acquisitions than to expansion in South Africa. What the Government needs to do to improve public health care in South Africa is to reduce the role of the State and expand that of the private sector—including private medical insurance — not the other way around.
- John Kane-Berman
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