NHI warning lights

When the SA constitution was drafted and the government advocated for universal healthcare coverage, youth unemployment was at about 30%. Today it is 61%, the highest in the world. It has always been emphasised that the proposed National Health Insurance (NHI) is the funding tool for universal healthcare coverage. Yet, all other state-owned enterprises have been spectacularly destroyed by government, and I urge the National Assembly to take the interests of the nation to heart when debating this highly emotive subject. It doesn’t help to highlight all the advantages of universal healthcare coverage when we all know it will never be achieved in a country where only five of the 696 public health facilities that were inspected for quality of patient care in 2016/17 passed.

All the pilot projects of the NHI have failed. The national health budget for all hospitals and clinics is a measly R60bn. There is a chronic shortage of doctors and nurses, many of whom are at home because there is no money to employ them. Patients sometimes go without food, and overcrowding in one hospital led to neonates being placed in cardboard boxes. So where will equal, high-quality patient care come from under the NHI? The only result will be the total collapse of whatever is left of our healthcare system. The Life Esidimeni scandal showed that no amount of reasoning can convince this government to move away from its ideology, no matter what is at stake. Cometh Dube-makholwa, via email