How successful is South Africa at providing decent healthcare for all its citizens? Is the gap in healthcare between the poorest members of society and the richest getting narrower? The Universities of Cape Town and Witwatersrand, South Africa, looked at South Africa’s efforts to ensure all sections of the population have proper access to health services. A right to good health services is enshrined in the country’s constitution and has played an important part in ensuring the health service remains a priority. Nevertheless the study found certain problems have arisen in the drive to create an equitable health system.
Equity in Health
Health inequalities: the legacy of apartheid in South Africa
HIV/AIDS crippling south african public health sector
With an increasing number of HIV/AIDS patients seeking health care from already over-stretched public sector facilities, the HIV/AIDS epidemic is undermining the quality of care in South Africa's health system. According to The South African Health Review (SAHR) for 2002, published recently by the NGO Health Systems Trust (HST), HIV/AIDS is the "single most important" challenge to improving health care delivery in the country.
Rolling back reality: making malaria control accessible to all
Effective tools to control malaria are available now but are not being accessed by the populations in need. The prime example is insecticide-treated bednets (ITNs). Most malaria-carrying mosquitoes bite at night. Thus ITNs have been proven to reduce malaria infection and death rates by forming both a physical barrier against mosquitoes and, in the words of the World Health Organisation (WHO) ‘generating a chemical halo’ around the bed, repelling and killing mosquitoes. However, for people in rural Africa, bednets are hard to get hold of. In these areas, access is often restricted to those with money to buy them from urban centres, or to those taking part in isolated research projects and localised bednet programmes.
Spread of tuberculosis relentless in Zambia, AIDS responsible
The spread of tuberculosis has been relentless in Zambia, southern Africa in the last thirty seven years and the trend continues to date. This disturbing fact was published recently in the South African Journal of Medicine by a group of Zambian doctors led by Dr. Mwaba, working together with doctors from London. The study reviewed official health records of TB cases reported throughout the country between January 1, 1964 to December 31, 2000.
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tac holds international day of protest
The South African AIDS advocacy group Treatment Action Campaign held an international day of protest on April 24 against the South African government's handling of the AIDS epidemic, demanding that the government improve access to antiretroviral drugs.
THE COST OF HIV PREVENTION AND TREATMENT INTERVENTIONS IN SOUTH AFRICA
What would be the cost of introducing AIDS-related prevention and treatment programmes in South Africa? This paper, produced by the Centre for Social Science Research (CSSR) at the University of Cape Town, attempts to answer this question by combining detailed information about the costs of implementing several interventions with demographic projections of their impact. Information about prices, wages and other cost components is drawn from a range of primary and secondary sources.
THE HIGH COSTS OF PRIVATE HEALTH in South Africa
Government attempts over the past five years to get private medical schemes to take care of more South Africans have failed as high costs have generally precluded those earning less than R5 000 from joining private schemes. Medical inflation has outpaced overall inflation by around 5% every year, and this has virtually nullified regulations introduced from January 1999 aimed at opening up the private sector.
UNSAFE HEALTH CARE SPREADING HIV?
This posting by the Africa Policy E-Journal of Africa Action contains the executive summary of a new white paper from Physicians for Human Rights, on the transmission of HIV in Africa through unsafe medical care, including unsafe injections and blood transfusions. The paper concludes that AIDS prevention efforts need to take into account significant evidence that transmission through unsafe medical care has been significantly underestimated, and urgently recommends increased investment in adequately protecting blood supplies, preventing re-use of needles for injections, and taking other health care precautions that are considered standard in developed countries.
Zambian PWAs sceptical about ARV roll-out
A government programme to provide anti-AIDS drugs to HIV-positive Zambians had ignored those who needed it most and was simply "a lot of hot air", activists told PlusNews. Last year, the government announced that up to 10,000 people living with HIV/AIDS (PWAs) would receive free antiretroviral (ARV) drugs in nine provincial treatment centres. The project would also provide a team consisting of a physician, faith healer, counsellor and social worker in each centre.
ARV’S - WHAT IT WOULD COST
The cost of a state supported anti-retroviral programme in South Africa in its most expensive year could be below R10-billion and still be highly effective, according to calculations by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and researchers at the University of Cape Town (UCT). TAC manager, Nathan Geffen, presented these figures to Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Health last month.