The health minister is on the campaign trail for her department, giving doctors a chance to harangue her in public. Pat Sidley reports
A GATHERING in a huge auditorium at the Johannesburg Hospital last week probably marked the first time in South African history that health care professionals, many of them doctors, had a chance to harangue the minister of health publicly.
When an attempt was made to cut the meeting short after close to two hours, the minister whispered audibly: “No, let it go on. They don’t get the chance to do this very often.”
So on it went — with doctors, health-sector trade unionists, health care administrators, breast-feeding advocates and the like bending the ear of Health Minister Nkosazana Zuma.
It was no hardship for Zuma, however. She was on the campaign trail, selling the health aspects of a better life for all, fertilising the medical grassroots for the vote likely to come up later this year on a national health system and the funding for it.
The “consultation” process followed a spate of negative press reports the department had collected while it delved, out of the public eye, into national health in- surance schemes. Scalded by being called secretive, accused of behaving counter to the ANC’s desire for transparency, the department was forced into opening itself to public scrutiny. It promised a process of extensive consultation for its newest committee, which is looking into a national health insurance scheme.
The invitation to the media from the department said the minister would begin her consultations by talking to general practitioners at the Johannesburg Hospital. There may have been some GPs there, but the invited audience consisted largely of “progressive” health care organisations, including representatives of the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu), health care specialists in the private and public sector and as many hospital and medical school staff as could find room in the vast auditorium.
Any question could be put to the minister, who fielded them alone, with her special adviser Dr Olive Shisana making notes. However, not every question was fully answered, especially not the ticklish ones.
The questions were prefaced by an appeal from the minister to recognise that the country simply had to bring the majority who had not had health care in the past equitably into the system.
Those in the auditorium, she said, probably had more taps than occupants in their homes. But some entire communities did not have access to taps or clean water.
Zuma wrung applause several times from the audience, but nothing like that attracted by the Johannesburg Hospital doctor who drew attention to the appalling working conditions in the public sector.
A Nehawu representative asked if Zuma would be seduced by the lobby of doctors. With her own medical training rising to the fore, Zuma proclaimed that doctors worked largely for the public good, but she would not, despite this, be seduced by the doctors. When she agreed with another questioner that doctors were not the only health care group which should have a stake in the health of the people, she drew applause.
As for the “Deeble plan” — the national health insurance scheme proposed by Australian Dr Johnathan Deeble — she responded to a question about it with the terse statement that whatever plan was adopted, it would not be called the “Deeble plan”.
It was one of the times when Zuma the veteran politician answered, rather than Zuma the doctor. Another was when she was asked about the three-month time frame allotted to the committee looking into a national health insurance system. “If we had to wait until we find the perfect model, we would never start,” she replied.
A foreign doctor asked about the limited registration available to doctors from most other countries. This, he said, was unfair given the fact that many of these doctors had practised in areas where South Africans refused to work. The minister replied that this was an area she intended to “revisit”, and that it did need
All in all it was a most impressive performance, politically. But then, selling an equitable national health system to South Africans is a bit like selling the RDP to the ANC.