In my book, “Walking the Road of Healthcare in South Africa”, I reflect on my experiences as a senior bureaucrat and what I term the “argument for meaningful debate”. A parliament is defined as a “formal conference for the discussion of public affairs” while a legislature is defined as “body of persons having the power to legislate or make laws”. My expectation of the deliberations in such a body or a committee of such a structure, was that there should be a meaningful debate with the exchange of logical and consequent ideas. However in my experience, meaningful debate is often a scarce commodity in the chambers of the South African…

The advent of the Omicron variant initially worrisome, and in various ways very damaging to the South African hospitality industry, has proved to be less serious than expected in terms of the health impact. Nevertheless there seems to be a reluctance on the part of health experts, to whom I referred in my last post, to now let go of their prime position in the media that they had occupied at the height of the pandemic and return to the less glamorous aspects of health care. A negative aspect of the pandemic aside from the direct consequences of the virus, has been the disruption of the wider ambit of health…