TAC Electronic Newsletter

• The Draft Health Charter: An agreement for transformation or inequality?
• Key points on the draft Health Charter
• TAC/ALP submission to the Department of Health on the draft Health Charter (endorsed by NACTU and South African Catholic Bishops Conference)
  
• A letter has been sent by the South African Council of Churches to the Minister of Health raising concerns about the draft Health Charter
• Getting infected as a truck driver. As told to Sibongile Mashele by FS

• Ebrahim Patel, General-Secretary of SACTWU, will deliver the second Ashley Kriel Annual Youth Lecture on 18 August 2005 (tonight). Time: 18h30 for 19h00. Venue: Great Hall at UWC.

The Draft Health Charter: An agreement for transformation or inequality?

• We support the Health Charter and acknowledge the task team's effort to develop it.

• Regrettably, there are a number of serious flaws that require significant reconsideration and substantial redrafting.

• The health charter was drafted without sufficient consultation. Both civil society and health-care unions were left out of the consultation process and this is reflected by the emphasis of the draft.

• The deadline for making submissions, i.e. 15 August, was too short.

• The draft does not make the purpose of the Health Charter clear.

• For us, the Health Charter must be used to secure agreements necessary for transforming the health sector. This means reducing inequality between the private and public sector, moving towards a unified health system and developing a minimum package of care and service that all public sector patients should receive.

• The emphasis of the Health Charter is currently on Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) and transfer of ownership. Concrete targets are established for this. We support BEE, but transfer of ownership will not on its own translate to better health-care for the majority of South Africans, especially poor people. Although the charter contains much rhetoric about improved health for poor people, no concrete targets are set for reducing inequality or improving patient care. The Health Charter has no concrete recommendations around National Health Insurance and does not adequately consider the provisions of the recently passed National Health Act. Nor are targets established for increasing the number of black health professionals (e.g. pathologists, doctors, dentists etc.). A broad-based BEE approach would consider these factors, but they are neglected in the charter.

• None of the targets set for the private sector are aimed at improving health-care generally or the public sector in particular.

• All stakeholders must be party to the Charter, including providers in all sectors, health care workers and organisations representing people who use health care services;
• The Charter should be informed by a vision of a unitary health care system which provides an essential set of quality health care services to all South Africans on an affordable basis, taking into account each user's ability to pay;
• These objectives of transformation, equity and universal provision of quality services through a unified system should be more clearly articulated in the Charter's objectives;
• The Charter should set measurable goals and time frames for the realisation of the vision set out in existing legislation and policy statements;
• Government must take charge of implementation, including the introduction of measures to control spiralling health care costs;
• Consumers of health care services should participate fully in structures set up to regulate the health care system;
• The subsidising of private health care should be phased out; and
• The Health Charter is not the most appropriate place to address BEE concerns insofar as they deal with the structure of ownership of private health care enterprises rather than the extension of equal access to quality treatment to all South Africans.

Getting infected as a truck driver