House Chairperson, hon Minister of Health Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, hon Minister of Home Affairs Dr Nkosazana Dlamini- Zuma, Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Malusi Gigaba, my colleagues from provinces, hon members of this Council, distinguished guests, comrades and friends, ladies and gentlemen, let me also take this opportunity to share the provincial condolences regarding the passing of our Deputy Minister Sefularo. Even though I only worked with him for a very short time, I learnt a lot from him. May his soul rest in peace.
Chairperson, never before has community participation been as indispensable as it is today. Allow me to look back at the year that has just ended and share with this House some of the exciting moments we experienced, and the challenges we encountered in delivering health care in the Northern Cape province.
In search of solutions and innovative ideas from those who do not source them from books and websites, I undertook a campaign to establish ministerial advisory bodies in the form of provincial and district councils, hospital boards and clinic committees. I visited health facilities where I met the most amazing people from our province who, through our programmes, saw the quality of their lives improve. This proved to be a great source of information on how government services impact on the lives our people.
It is important to point out that, arising from these stakeholders' deliberations, a common understanding has emerged regarding critical areas affecting the health sector: Firstly, there is the broader context underpinning our legislative framework, including the objectives of our policies and their redistributive role in better health outcomes towards improving the health profile of our people in the province. Most importantly, the focus is on the four broad categories the Minister of Health alluded to in his Budget Vote, namely increasing life expectancy, combating HIV and Aids, decreasing the burden of diseases such as tuberculosis and improving health system effectiveness by strengthening primary health care and reducing the costs of health care.
Secondly, we have begun dealing with the institutional operational weaknesses identified in our discussions with key stakeholders. For the first time, we now have objective data that confirms our long-held suspicion that our patients are not safe. Cleanliness leaves a lot to be desired. There is a poor quality of care and dilapidated infrastructure, and the capacity of our facilities to deliver quality health care resulted in medico-legal litigations. Thanks go to the stewardship of our Minister on the above issues as confirmed by our stakeholders.
In as far as health care effectiveness is concerned, strides made in this regard can be ascribed to the health policies that prioritised the poor and the marginalised. That included massive expansion of health infrastructure for the delivery of primary health care services through the building and upgrading of more than eight facilities and 18 sites accredited as ARV sites, and increases in the number of health facilities from 152 to 228.
However, a new set of challenges includes the upgrade of facilities, poor road conditions, inadequate staffing and increases in the number of health professionals employed in the public health sector, including training of mid-level workers in a range of health disciplines.
Lastly, most important to our province is that we will have a new intake of nurses, about 90 of them, where they would be trained in our own facility in the province.
However, disturbing incidents in a few facilities have created the false impression that we are not doing enough to address issues of maternal and child health. I wish to state categorically that the department is fully committed to improving the health status of women, mothers and children of our country and to achieving the Millennium Development Goals.
Let me provide some of the information that I referred to above: Firstly, we have strengthened various health programmes to improve service delivery. In 2009-10, we fully immunised about 93% of children under the age of one year to protect them against vaccine preventable diseases. However, important cases remain a major threat to the progress we have made in this area.
Secondly, we also provided vitamin A supplementation to 70% of children aged six to twelve months as well as to children aged one to six years who were seen at public health facilities, and 72% of post-partum mothers, and our aim is to reach about 90% of this group.
Thirdly, about 203 of our health workers have been trained in advanced midwifery, maternal health and basic antenatal care to reduce maternal mortality.
Lastly, we rolled out the child health programme in all districts in September 2009, and 70% of children were reached. We have also made sure that the H1N1 vaccine and measles and polio immunisation campaign was launched in the province by me in Deben on 5 pril 2010, and it is going on very well in our province.
Yesterday and the day before yesterday, Cabinet had a door-to-door campaign in three of our towns and we could see that our people are well aware of this campaign. And by now we have reached about 3 065 children as far as the vaccinations are concerned.
The estimated HIV prevalence rate amongst pregnant women has decreased significantly since 2005. In a year-to-year comparison, the provincial HIV prevalence rate amongst pregnant women decreased from 16,5% in 2007 to 16,2% in 2008. The observed trends in the past three years suggest stabilisation but trends in the epidemic should be observed over a period of time in order to avoid incorrect conclusions and perceptions. The Northern Cape department of health has planned its response to the above message through a massive HIV counselling and testing campaign, which will be done as soon as the Minister has outlined that a date will be set. We have made sure as a province that we made our institutions ready. We have got co-opted centres in the provincial office and co-opted centres in the districts and in all our facilities.
Hon members, this debate coincides with the day of the TB indaba that is taking place today in our province today, which intends to make sure that we measure our TB cases and make sure that we come up with plans to make sure that we combat TB.
The advent of the multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis, MDRT, and extensively drug-resistant TB, XDR-TB, in 2006 poses a particular challenge to the public health care in our province. The number of TB, MDR-TB and XDR-TB cases in the province is on the rise. The number of new TB cases increased from 6 127 in 2004 to 8 192 in 2008. However, we are already seeing signs of success through the steady improvement in the cure rate, which was about 62% in 2008 with a defaulter rate of 5,9% in that particular year, compared to the defaulter rate of 13% in the previous year, which was 2007.
Due to the implementation of the tracer projects in both the Pixley Ka Seme and Frances Baard districts, more than 80% of the TB defaulters have been traced through the TB tracer project and resumed TB treatment.
Hon members, our human resources constitute one of the most important assets in the delivery of health services. It is therefore essential that we continue to create a conducive and productive working environment for them. Our vacancy rate, hon House Chair, was standing at 41%, which has been reduced significantly to 39% with a target of a further 25% reduction for the year 2010-11.
We have made two strategic appointments at management level to strengthen both the strategic and operational management. Our skills development strategy is yielding results as more than 10 students on the Cuban medical programme will be returning in July this year to South African universities to conclude their final year.
The department will ensure that the health care system is properly managed by appointing our hospital managers who are trained in leadership, health management and governance. All districts will produce district health expenditure reports to give an indication of how public funds have been spent and also guide the department as to how much resources are needed per district.
I am cutting out some content, hon Chairperson, because this speech is so long. If I were in my own house, I could have spent more time, but now I am in a different House. [Laughter.] Lastly, we have completed construction and officially opened some of our clinics. We have opened one in Pampierstad, Hartswater, Olifantshoek and Hondeklipbaai. And we are also planning to make sure that we are going to build new clinics - one in Norvalspont, Groot Mier, Mapoteng ... [Interjections.] As a department from the Northern Cape, we support this Budget Vote. [Time expired.] [Applause.]