Here follow excerpts from the speech delivered by FF Plus MPL, Tammy Wessels, in the Free State Legislature earlier today during the budget vote debate of the Free State Department of Health:
The Free State Department of Health was placed under administration because it was unable to fulfil its statutory functions. Health care in the Free State seems to be in perpetual crisis due to mismanagement, misappropriation and a great shortage of doctors, nursing staff, medication, equipment as well as other resources.
Amid the crisis, the Free State government decided to finance students to study medicine in Cuba, China and Russia, while South Africa does have top-notch medical schools like the one at the University of the Free State.
The training that students undergo in Cuba does not comply with the health care standards and circumstances in South Africa. Doctors trained in Cuba can only render health care in clinics where primary health care is offered. They are not trained to properly identify and treat cases like the ones that are prevalent in South African hospitals.
The students that the Free State government sent to China for training, and that have received three years of training already, now have to continue their studies in Russia at the expense of the Free State tax payers, because the Chinese curriculum does not comply with the required standards.
Many more students could have studied and qualified as doctors at South African universities with the financial resources that were squandered on these senseless training programmes abroad.
These training programmes were initiated due to historical loyalties and do not properly meet the demand for qualified doctors in South Africa.
There are hundreds of prospective students who do not get selected to study medicine based on a number of factors including, amongst others, skin colour.
The Free State Department of Health should rather join hands with the Department of Education and implement measures to increase the capacity of our medical schools so that more students can be selected and have the opportunity to study and complete a medical degree at a local university, like the University of the Free State. In this way, the demand for competent medical staff who are properly trained will be more readily met.
As things stand with public health at present, the government’s National Health Care Plan is doomed to fail miserably.
The Free State Department of Health simply cannot provide proper health care to the Free State community and this problem will not be solved by means of obligatory contributions to a plan that will only increase the pressure on public health care institutions.
The ruling party is not performing its constitutional duty to provide proper health care to the people of the Free State, because political motives and self-serving notions are the order of the day.
The people of the Free State deserve better. They deserve properly trained medical staff and the proper management and provision of resources that can mean the difference between life and death.
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