Sihlalo, namalunga ahloniphekileyo, Mqondisi-Jikelele nethimba lakho laseDST kanye nabamele amaKhansela abika phansi koMnyango. [Chairperson, hon members, Director-General together with your team from the DST as well as those representing councils that report to this department.]
My take in this debate is on health, and science and technology. I'll be addressing the scientific solutions and innovations that are happening due to research and development in the department, with regard to new drugs, vaccines, devices, diagnostics and new techniques in process engineering and manufacturing. We need these scientific solutions to address a plethora of conditions, some of which are diseases of poverty, HIV and Aids, and malaria and cancer, which have become the forerunners, really, for the Department of Science and Technology to look into.
To improve and to add and beef up our research capacity, the Department of Science and Technology made a bid for the third component of the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, which is situated at the University of Cape Town, UCT, under the Department of Molecular Medicine. It is also helping in coming up with solutions to improve the health of South Africans.
We are aware that 10% of South Africa's population are infected with malaria. The high prevalence of HIV places more urgency on the country to develop effective scientific tools to fight malaria aggressively. The study of the malaria epidemic in 2000 revealed that HIV increases the risk of developing severe malaria twofold, and the risk of mortality six- to eightfold and the World Health Organisation, WHO, has confirmed these findings.
South African malaria researchers, working together with international researchers, are looking into global and local research in the context of drugs, diagnostic tests and epidemiology. In addition to what the Deputy Minister has said around telemedicine, KwaZulu-Natal had this facility approved in 2007, which allows for Durban academic hospitals to be connected or linked to the rural hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal, 16 of them were to be the first and 27 more will be linked into this. [Applause.]
The intention is to link academic sites in Durban and rural hospitals, and to provide these hospitals with diagnostic instruments and units. Special medical services will also be acquired to give support to all these sites. The project intends to provide a working model that will be adapted for use in the rest of the country and will provide viable solutions that can be exported to other developing countries. For the rural people, to add to what the Deputy Minister has said, there is broadband connectivity that can be used for e-government and e-education for medical informatics, epidemiological research and evaluation.
The Medical Device Centre of Competence was approved in 2009 and this allows the country to develop its innovation potential for the South African sector and also for export in line with the Technology Innovation Agency, TIA, and the Intellectual Property Rights, IPR. In 2009, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, CSIR, researchers formulated a synthetic material which was used successfully in a mandible reconstruction of a 9-year-old patient. Work is in progress to develop this technology.
The Eyeborn Ceramic Orbital Implant has already been implanted into more than 350 patients and the implant has had very good results. It also allows for all eye movements, so that it is not possible to detect that the eye is artificial. This has been commercialised successfully ... [Applause.] ... manufactured by Cerdak in KwaZulu-Natal and the market distribution is done by Visicare.
The CSIR and the University of Pretoria have developed a bio-artificial liver support system that is capable of providing liver function while housed outside the body, and like the bypass and the renal dialysis machines which are outside the body, it improves the person's health situation. [Applause.]
South Africa ranks fourth in the world in the total number of tuberculosis infections, 44% are co-infected with HIV... [Time expired.][Applause.]