One of the reasons why we are opting for the national health coverage is to make sure that our people do get value for money. Right now I would agree with you that the majority of our people are not getting value for money. Our health care system is under a great deal of stress.
If you go and talk to our people who are in the waiting queues in hospitals and clinics they will tell you that they are not entirely satisfied with the health care that they are getting. But things are improving; we are opening new hospitals and equipping our hospitals. With the economic recovery stimulus
package that we announced we needed to employ more doctors and nurses, we needed to equip our clinics and hospitals with bed linen, with beds where there was none, we pumped money into that system and things are beginning to move and improve.
The national health system is going to add to that improvement trajectory that is bound to follow. And when we are able to manage the finance system, the procurement system and the human resources properly, we will then be able, at the management of the hospitals of course, to have a health care system that will be able to bring social justice to our people.
I have no doubt whatsoever that once we reposition our health care, though the health care coverage that we are talking about, our hospitals and clinics will function better.
At the signing of the compact we had an occasion with all these professionals - the professors, the doctors, the scientists and workers in hospitals - to look at an ideal hospital, and we all agreed that this is the type of a hospital that we want and we
committed ourselves to ensuring that we do get that type of dispensation in our hospitals.
So, we built a model, an ideal, and we are going to be working on an ongoing basis to achieve that model and the NHI is going to give us the wings, the mechanics, the mechanism to do precisely that. Thank you, hon Speaker.