Following my last post, I have been reflecting further on the failures in public health care in South Africa since 1994. In doing so I reread a book, “Yenza – a blueprint for transformation”, published in 1998 that has been on my bookshelf since then. I worked with the author, Dr. Piet Human, on several occasions during the early days of my time as Head of the Free State Department of Health. Read some twenty years later, the optimism, idealism and hope of the years immediately after 1994, reflected in the book, are poignant given what has transpired since. The opening sentences of his book read as follows: “The present…
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Learning Lessons From The Past 25 years
Why are the public health services in a perilous state in many areas of South Africa? These shortcomings have been brought into sharp focus by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is true that in 1994 at the time of the democratic transition in this country, that the health services bore the scars of decades of racial segregation. Hospitals and clinics were divided along racial lines with facilities for patients of colour inferior to those available to white patients. When I moved into health management in 1995 as Head of the Free State Department of Health, this difference was a stark reality. It was mirrored by the realities experienced…
