Government Urges Patience for NHI Release

June 3 - The Minister for Health, Dr. Aaron Motsoaledi promised South Africans that the government is working around the clock to establish the National Health Insurance scheme.

He said that many believe that the NHI is "just the release of a document", however it actually involves extensive preparation of the South African health care system.

"The reengineering of the Health Care System is vital," he said.

Dr. Motsoaledi admitted that the present health care system could not support any type of NHI scheme.

"I know that at face value, problems in the health system are said to be existing only in the public sector and the private sector must be left alone to some wayward phenomena called market forces, even though these market forces dismally failed to stop or more appropriately caused the most recent global economic collapse," he said.

He said that there were many reasons why the current system does not work: It is poorly managed, the quality of care is low and there are low resources available to the public sector.  As such, the system is unsustainable, destructive, costly and curative in nature.

Three Streams

Motsoaledi said there will be three streams of healthcare in the re-engineered system.  The first would be the deployment of a team of five medical specialists to every district, made up of an obstetrician, a paediatrician, a family physician, a midwife and a nurse.

The second stream would be the development of a school health programme, while the third would be a a ward based PHC model, with ten fully trained PHC workers on every ward.