I'm not sure why there's an objection because I'm relating to a story that could be said by any person who has a domestic worker at home. I'm not referring to anyone in the House, if there is anybody in the House then it is fine.
Then the conversation will go on to say: we do have a pool of so many domestic workers around us whom when your health deteriorates, I'll go and pick one more because I don't have space and time to take care of you. Because good health is for the rich. This is quite an immoral and uncaring attitude of some of the citizens in the world and some of them are probably on South Africa and some of them probably in the House. They continue to say just fix your clinic and hospitals and everything will be okay.
Our research shows that there is no country in the world that waited for all things to be fixed, clinics and hospitals before
implementing universal health coverage. We say we will fly NHI as we fix our health system.
Returning to the other programme, just last week we received 200 Cuban trained fifth year medical students returning to our motherland. This week and next week we will be receiving many more bringing the total to 647 returning students. We commend the Department Of Health for this vision of sending students to Cuba when our own universities at that time were either not willing or unable to increase their enrolment.
The benefit of these returning students who come from all over South Africa except Western Cape for reasons best known to DA is that they bring with them depth of knowledge in public health, trained in the country that has achieved the following: Cuba has improved the life expectancy beyond 70 years; eliminated malaria; has little or no maternal death; has little or no infant mortality, has little or no infant mortality; and has no under five mortality.
If we would want to strengthen primary health care and
NHI in our country, we must tap on this model of training students in Cuba. I would advise hon Minister to maybe look into a situation
of maybe bringing such a model in our universities in the country. [Applause]
I received a letter on the 9th July 2019 from Mr Mpho Mpogeng, President of the SA Emergency Practitioners Union. I phoned Mr Mpogeng the same day to acknowledge his letter. We further agreed that our offices will set up meetings addressing the issues raised in the letter namely: the plight of emergency medical officers in our country. This meeting is scheduled for 23 July 2019 where we are going to tackle this matter.
It would be important to know how Hon Minister, how you plan to assist our workers in this category. Hon Minister and Deputy Minister I think it is thuggery for people to come to clinics and hospitals, finding nurses assisting injured people and threaten nurses to stop saving lives. Those incidents have happened in various parts of our country, recently in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. We need to collectively condemn these atrocious acts. Again Minister, we would need to work with you on these social ills. After all, safety and security of our staff members and patients is one of the pronouncements of the department as non-negotiable.
We have since learned that on infrastructure hon Minister, you have plans. This government has actually done quite a lot but we need to look back that not only were you building new clinics but you also had to revitalise a lot of clinics and hospitals that were previously built by the apartheid government in our homelands. But, there were no maintenance plans that were put in place to ensure that those systems are in place, that is why among other things I just refer to the province where I from that King Edward Hospital has been revitalised by over of R200 million, following storm damages that came to that province and parts of the country in various hospitals.
Hon Minister you need to review your plan on infrastructure well as we would support you on any efforts that you will put in this regard. There is more is pressure to build new facilities but you also need to look back and improve those that you have already built.
In my previous life as a soldier I actually impacted. I'm really concern Minister when I notice this in health that when a of the South African National Defence Force, SANDF, a soldier were to report to Phalaborwa sick bay he/she would produce a force number and the medical file is brought out. That visit is also recorded
electronically, not only for the member for but for the dependants of that member as well. When the same soldier is at 1Military in Pretoria or 2Military in Cape Town, the file is retrieved within seconds. There is no waiting time in any of the SANDF sick bays. There is no loss of files in the army in our country. There are no unscrupulous lawyers that that take our government to courts due to loss of medical records.
In that situation therefore hon Minister, we now know that there are no litigations that come to the army unplanned and unable to deal with because there is no loss of files, we don't have patients waiting two hours to get a file. Hon Minister we plea that this must be looked into as a matter of urgency. [Applause]
On the staff shortage, we note what ewe have said and we actually support that, but we wish that hon Minister that you consider amongst other things, other categories of staff to be employed beyond those that you mentioned, porters, clerks and cleaners.
A clean hospital would not need a professional nurse. Taking those who have left this world into the new world into mortuaries is not done by nurses and therefore, in shortages if you leave and ignore
these other categories you might fight a hospital not functioning well.
We note your comments on the medical stock out, but we would like to say the explanation given by the department that the medical shortage is a global problem that affects all countries due to supplies not having active pharmaceutical ingredient. We would want department to be proactive, among other things announce and have a plan on how institutions that are experiencing drug shortages should respond to the public.
It is not acceptable that if the medicine is not available and therefore cannot be given for good reasons, there is no proper communication to the citizens of this country as to when and how they will get the medication. Hon Minister we would like to get a detailed plan of your department's fight against non-communicable diseases. Your annual performance plan, APP, does touch on this matter and talks about exercise in fighting diabetes and hypertension.
Countries that have healthy lifestyle have actually impacted very positively on non communicable diseases, NCD, because things like
those delay the onset of diabetes; they delay the onset of hypertension ... [Interjections]