Hon member, I think your timeframes are a bit too short. If we would have expected that from the last elections, something could have been done. Now, I think that would have been quick on anything. However, the reality ... [Interjections.] Yes, the real issue is that we agree that we need to bring as many clinics as possible to the community.
At the moment, we generally go by a distance of 5km - a catchment area that is within a 5km radius. So, if there are clinics that are closer to that, it can happen because of planning, but in general terms, that is what we look at. The alternative is looking at the size of the population. Due to backlogs, it is not possible to put a clinic in each and every ward, but you can have more clinics in a ward depending on the density of the population there.
The issue of medical supplies and the issue of human resources are issues that we are addressing. We have indicated this year that the numbers of staff we want to ensure that we have put in position over 4 000 staff members that must be across various professional categories.
So, from that point of view, the matter is being given attention. What we have also said and we will raise it in another question, is that we have actually reprioritised our budget to make sure that we assist various provinces to be able to deal with the issues of staffing.
The issue of medicine availability, the approach we have taken is that those budgets must be ring-fenced so that there is no shortage of medicine. We have also indicated that there are systems now. One of them is what we call CCMDD, which is really there to assist the provision of medicine for those who are receiving chronic medication closer to where they live. We need to expand that.
Then, the other one is stock visibility system that is to look at the shortfalls in the ordering of medicine between the manufacturer and the hospital or a clinic they are supplying. So, we are dealing with all of those issues. Twenty-four hour services are not always possible. It depends on the availability of resources.