Permit me hon House Chairperson, to remind the House what happened to our late President Mandela when he was released. Only a few months he went to hospital after he had declared that he was not well and had tuberculosis, TB. Indeed he was treated - I do not want to say that he was recognised basically because of his status - inside a period of six weeks and all the problems were dealt with. The question is, is that the case with the majority of the people of our country today? That to me is a major problem. The late President received quality urgent treatment.
Today, the majority of the people who are faced with this illness are the working class and the poor people. What happens to them? They go to hospitals, clinics and there you will find serious problems. Fortunately, I want to emphasise that our Deputy Minister, the Minister, the previous Ministers going back to the late Manto Tshabalala-Msimang were doctors and we therefore know what is happening in our hospitals. Is there any success? I want to say there is no success so that we then can be able to look into that.
In the hospitals we do not have doctors. Remember we have one doctor to 100 patients and then therefore as a result of that
you cannot have proper treatment. We have a problem of lack of medicines and if you go to hospitals because of that there is a major problem. I come from the rural areas and the Deputy Minister comes from there as well. You know that the buildings are collapsing and the hospitals now are becoming shacks and as a result of that we will not have patients treated properly.
Given this, I want to say that we need to come up with a state of emergency. Number one, accept that the majority of our people who have TB and other diseases are the ones who are not working, extremely poor and these would not even want to go to hospitals because should they go there then, they will lose their jobs.