The South African Communist Party Gauteng Province welcomes the appointment of comrade Dr Gwen Ramokgopa as the new MEC of Health. We congratulate her and are confident that given her wealth of experience, she will be able to steer the Department in the right direction.

While the new MEC settles into her new portfolio, the SACP believes her very immediate and urgent task is to consider taking extraordinary measures to ensure that not a single life is lost, which could be preventable.

The SACP believes this is extremely urgent considering that data and information initially presented on the number of deaths proved to be misleading and false, and we cannot therefore accept any similar shocks.

We believe that whilst the focus is on the Makgoba Report and its recommendations, it is equally important to ensure that new preventable deaths do not occur following the release of the report.

Whilst we may not dictate or impose to the new MEC what practical and concrete steps to take, we believe the task of preventing new deaths is an urgent one.

We believe the new MEC must proactively report new death cases and not leave it to chance (opportunists) and this should include immediately reporting on whether any new preventable deaths have occurred since the release of the Makgoba report.


Issued by the SACP Gauteng province