Honourable Speaker
"A long and healthy life for all South Africans" is a one of the outcomes
that the health department aims to fulfil and we all desire to support such
an ideal. But over the years it seems the health situation in our country
has seemingly grown worse by the day. Instead of improvements in the state
of healthcare, many communities, especially in rural areas, have been
neglected and lack the basic services due to every South African. We hear
plans to improve the health system, yet we read about hospitals being
closed, machines sitting idle in many clinics and the severe lack of doctors
in many hospitals and clinics in areas outside the cities.

The promises given by the department seem to revolve around too much
idealism, with plans in place to change the fabric of our health system but
at the same time seemingly ignoring the true state of our health system in
our society. The extreme lack of leadership within the provincial and
municipal health departments has ensured that what the national department
promises is taken with a grain of salt by communities.
The plans put in place by the department do not translate into concrete
plans on the ground mainly due to the local health departments not being
held accountable for the lack of services to the communities. Those who do
try to provide services usually fail because the provincial and national
departments do nothing to assist them with equipment or enough staff to
service the needs of their communities.
The department desires to "accelerate the delivery of health infrastructure"
during 2013/14 - the only problem with this desire is that so many clinics
and hospitals are in a state of disrepair, with some wards needing to be
demolished because they are not fit for human habitation. In some of these
hospitals, ventilation is so poor that there is a major probability that
people with TB will infect others as there is no fresh air coming into these
wards. This defeats the plan to "reduce the burden of TB" because instead of
people getting better, they get worse and infect others at the same time.

In the last financial year, there were hospitals that did not spend the
budget that they were allocated, which would have gone a long way in
improving the state of healthcare. This cannot be allowed to continue
because it means those put in charge of ensuring the improvement of
healthcare are either too lazy to do so, preferring to receive their
salaries for doing nothing; or they are involved in corruption as they end
up misappropriate these funds. This is a state of affairs that seems to
happen every year and nothing seems to change.

We constantly read reports of hospital staff, from administration to nurses
and doctors, who mistreat patients or are indifferent to peoples' needs. If
one asks community members about the staff of their local hospital or
clinic, they will complain about being mistreated or ignored when they need
help. It is a constant state of affairs that one can find unqualified people
doing work that they are not qualified for - their carelessness constantly
puts the lives of patients at risk.

We cannot even begin to deal with issues HIV/AIDS, TB and incidents of
maternal and child mortality if the basics of healthcare are not in place.
As much we need to see action being taken on these issues, the basic
structures of healthcare need to be dealt with as well. We need to be able
to support leaders who take their responsibility seriously, because anything
less results in the death of our people. Our rural areas are the worst
affected and yet nothing seems to have changed over the years. The
department needs to make drastic improvements in providing healthcare or
else our people will never know what it is like to receive proper basic
healthcare.

The IFP supports the budget vote

I Thank You