Hon House Chair, every South African deserves quality health care, because we all know a sick nation can never be a successful nation.
The provision of accessible, affordable and high-quality health care to our people is therefore not only a right and a moral imperative, but also contributes to local economic growth. Let's face it, the health care system is failing our psychiatric patients on a daily basis. According to a Global Watch 2 report:
People with mental illness often end up being misdirected to prisons instead of appropriate mental health care and support services. A significant portion of prisoners suffer from mental illness, making prisons the new mental health asylums of our time. Humiliation and sexual abuse by prison guards and other inmates pose as a further threat to their physical and psychological wellbeing.
Prison mental health services are often neglected, as are the people they are meant to serve. There is a huge lack of funding; a lack of resources and adequately trained medical personnel. In some areas, mental health services for prisoners are missing entirely and rendered inefficient by poorly trained staff and abusive and alienating practices such as solitary confinement.
South Africa's prison population is amongst the highest in the world, seventh to be precise, and the highest in Africa. And although the rates of mental disorders among prison populations are well known in Western countries, there is currently little available data for South Africa.
A recent study by the Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine revealed that of the 193 prisoners in KwaZulu-Natal surveyed, 185 were males and eight females. It was found that 23,3% suffered from psychosis, and bipolar, depression and anxiety disorders, and a further 22,1% suffered from substance abuse and alcohol-related disorders. These figures are aligned with international statistics. We have to be worried about all those who have gone through, and continue to go through the system undiagnosed.
The presence of mental illness in our prisons not only deprives prisoners of their rights and proper treatment and care, but also leads to possible maltreatment and stigmatisation. There is an ethical obligation to stop this.
I strongly believe that there should be adequate facilities in place to preserve their dignity and rights. The government needs to re-engineer urgently community psychiatric services with dedicated mental health care nurses. As long as the budget for mental health care is treated as the Cinderella of health care services, mental patients will continue to be deprived of their rights to be managed on mental health premises rather than in prison. The amending Bill is a step in the right direction. This will promote the effective implementation of the Act and improve service delivery in the area of involuntary health care services. The DA will support the Bill. Thank you. [Applause.]