It is worth reading my post of December 2021 again and then watching the link below to a recent Twitter post featuring a short input from Dr Imitiaz Sooliman. Well said Dr Sooliman! What we need is action and deeds by capable people as the answer to the challenges faced in South Africa today! https://twitter.com/nosh15/status/1550421503489019906?s=20&t=9PBoHEZ7i_MO8KdrdlWVJw
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Refuse … a marker of government failure
In March 2021 I wrote a post entitled, “Piles of refuse are a public health problem”, and reflected on the causes and consequences of this phenomenon. 18th July 2022 was the annual Mandela Day, a commemoration that is intended to be a “global call to action that celebrates the idea that each individual has the ability to make an impact”. Using the fact that Nelson Mandela fought for social justice for 67 years, people were urged this year to spend 67 minutes according the Mandela Day 2022 slogan to “Do what you can, With what you have, Where you are.” A video was posted on Twitter by the South Africa…
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The end of life … assisted dying … a vexed question
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Liberal, socialist or neoliberal?
A recent read of Francis Fukayama’s Liberalism and its Discontents set me thinking. For someone who is not a social scientist despite being a short book of 174 pages, it is a tightly written, challenging but stimulating read, which I can recommend. I have in fact read the book twice and continue to delve into various chapters in the book. Having in the past been taken to task for my application of the so-called neoliberal policies of budgetary austerity faced with a limited health budget, the book made me think whether I am indeed a liberal with socialist leanings, which I had always considered myself to be, or whether over…
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Winter of discontent … again!
My first post on my health blog on 13th July 2020 had the title. “Winter of discontent”. I am again posting a piece with the same title as on that date. The country has since emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic, which in July 2020 was still new to our experiences but dragged on with questionable measures taken by government over the subsequent almost two years with disastrous consequences for the lives of so many South Africans. At that time the country had experienced euphemistically termed “load shedding” but more aptly the failure of a vital state entity ESCOM to provide enough electricity to keep the wheels of industry turning and…
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Reflections on life in my seventies …
With the onset of winter in South Africa, the time of the “sere and yellow leaf”, I am in a reflective mood as my 74th birthday looms later in the year. I retired from a full-time career as a specialist paediatrician and then a senior government bureaucrat in 2015 having headed a university department of paediatrics and managed two provincial departments of heath in South Africa. Subsequently I have remained busy as a consultant and on the boards of various entities. 2023 marks 50 years since I qualified as a doctor in 1973 and the world around me has changed dramatically since that milestone and as befits that anniversary a…
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COVID-19 Lockdowns … can we learn the lessons?
A recent study published in the South African Journal of Science by Bradshaw et al provides interesting reflections on the number of reported COVID-19 deaths in the four waves of coronavirus infections compared against the total number of excess “natural” deaths during the same periods. While in one province, Western Cape, the ratio between reported COVID-19 deaths and the excess natural deaths was 69% in some other provinces, Mpumalanga and Limpopo respectively, the ratios were as low as 10 and 13%. From this it appears that quality of the provincial data systems varies markedly. The data also indicates that the quality of official COVID-19 reporting may be worsening over time. The…
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Echoes of State Capture and moral decay … a health perspective
Athol Williams’ Deep Collusion was a recent read. The book outlines the role of the international consultancy Bain & Company in the “capture” of state entities such as Telkom and the South African Revenue Services (SARS) during the Zuma presidency years. Of particular interest to me was the author’s conceptualisation of the process of state capture. He compares the differences between corruption and state capture. The different degrees and influence and control (decision making) that “illegitimate and unelected parties” have over the functions of the state determines the differences. In what he categorises as a “just democratic state” there is no influence or control by illegitimate parties over state resources. With…
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National Health Insurance … what is government saying?
I have written on several occasions about the proposed National Health Insurance Bill (NHI) that is currently before the South African parliament. I have proposed a rational debate and have raised my concerns about what is proposed in the draft legislation. I was thus interested in an interview with Dr Nicholas Crisp, the deputy director-general tasked with National Health Insurance in the National Department of Health published in the Sunday Times on 3rd April 2023. Dr Crisp, who is one of the most senior officials in the National Department of Health, was posed a series of questions by Chris Barron and his responses, if he was correctly quoted, I found…
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Walking the Road of Healthcare in South Africa now available on Amazon
I am glad to inform readers and subscribers to this page that my book published last year by Quickfox Publishers is now available on Amazon Books in either Kindle ebook or hard copy versions. In recent posts on this site I have referred to the book and I feel that what I have chronicled in the book remains relevant to the discourse on the future of healthcare in South Africa and elsewhere. I can also recommend the book to those who are either embarking on a career in health management or already in the thick of the challenges that such positions bring. I am glad that the book now has…
