Good day and all protocols observed. Hon House Chair, when I visited Mama Elsie last week, from Emandleni Informal Settlement in Ekurhuleni, I found her ill and groaning with pain. I asked her if she had been getting any treatment. She told that she had spent the entire day, from before sunrise, at the public healthcare facility. After waiting for more than 8 hours, she
eventually got to see a doctor. Mama sat doubled in pain on uncomfortable benches, with no food and no explanation. She said, the nurses treated her with disdain. When she finally thought she would be helped, she was advised that the medication she needed was out of stock and she would have to come back later.
The thought of trying to find taxi money out of her grant and another day in a long queue made her feel worse. She is just one victim of our collapsed health system. The shameful attitude of the state to the poor and vulnerable is, if you get sick, die quickly. Shocking, absolutely shocking! Health care is a constitutional right but this department cannot even get the bare basics right. No Ubuntu and Batho Pele Principles applied. Unprofessional and uncaring attitude to patients, patients have no sense of recourse as members on the board are political cadres.
I then met Sis Jabu, pregnant and in labour. She rushed to her clinic for assistance. Because of poor facilities, she was told to go by ambulance to the hospital. So she called one. With her water broken and in the final throes of labour, no ambulance arrived. Baby Siyabonga was born outside the clinic. The ambulance arrived three hours later. Thankfully there were no complications otherwise we could have lost two lives.
The Emergency Medical Services, EMS, in our health system are dysfunctional. Yet the department increased the budget for emergency services by only 4,7% from 2018/19 to the current 2019 /20 budget. Primary Health Care received the smallest budget allocation of R221,8 million, which is less than 1% of the departments budget. The bulk of the budgets are transferred to provinces, but this is exactly where these horror stories stem from. Minister, what are you going to do about it? One such example is the Tambo Memorial Hospital in Boksburg in Ekurhuleni. We hear about plans and more plans but no implementation on the ground for 25 years.
Chairperson, the ANC-led government is putting the cart before the horse. They want to drive through a problematic piece of legislation in the name of achieving universal healthcare. In reality, without the investment in primary healthcare, we will never improve the lives of our people. Billions have been spent on National Health Insurance, NHI, but what exactly can this department show for it? Visits to clinics and hospitals show very little. It is time to stop the talk and begin to deliver. Everyday lives are lost Billions have been ploughed into nothing, at the cost of the poor and sick. We want universal healthcare for our people, but we do not want a piece of legislation that will destroy the health system as we know it. I thank you. [Applause].