#Vote4Health | Only one of five political parties responds with its plans for healthcare in KZN
We asked key political parties in KwaZulu-Natal to set out their strategies to improve the health in the province. Whichever way the pie gets divvied up, though, healthcare is a matter of life and death.
Of the five parties contacted, only the DA responded. Multiple attempts were made to get responses from the other four parties. The fact that only one political party out of five, that were approached in KwaZulu-Natal, responded to Spotlight's questions adds to the disconnection between politicians and the people, says Professor Zamasomi Luvuno, deputy director at the
According to the latest KwaZulu-Natal report from Ritshidze, a community-led clinic monitoring and data collection project, in 98 facilities monitored in the three districts of King Cetshwayo, eThekwini and uMgungundlovu, there were 199 vacancies for professional nurses and 47 vacancies for enrolled nurses.| SA is facing worsening shortages of several categories of healthcare workers.
More bad news for the province has been the likes of the high-profile case of alleged fraud and corruption involving the extension of a R32 million contract. "We see for example that, with more people doing very well on ARVs, they are living longer and are starting to be affected by a range of non-communicable diseases , like hypertension and diabetes," Luvuno says.
New models, Luvuno says, could mean flexible or extended opening hours at clinics and doing better logistical planning on a local level, like better patient transport planning, to improve accessibility of services for more people. He points out there have been some successes for the province, including that some districts have achieved the 90-90-90 targets to end HIV.
Rural areas, for instance, are considered to have higher poverty rates and Treasury transfers are adjusted for this, which boosts provincial budgets. Gray says the province loses out when the provincial equitable share formula is used. "Just looking at pharmacists per 100 000 uninsured person in the province, we are at a quarter of what we need in KwaZulu-Natal; every single district in the province falls below the national average. By contrast, not a single district in the Western Cape falls below the national average. That is quite revealing because it speaks to persistent under-funding of the province," he says.
"Losing the province's central hospital to national control I think would be quite dramatic. Also, having the district's health management offices become national structures, is fundamentally overturning of the role of provinces and their relationship to district. Even though the implementation of NHI might take a long time to come about, it has the potential to be quite disruptive," Gray says.Edwin Baptie oversees the DA's health portfolio in the province.
Baptie also highlights a seeming discrepancy between budget numbers and the high staff vacancy numbers. The party also wants more decentralised powers to clinics and hospitals to improve operations at facilities.
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