WEDNESDAY, 4.30PM
HEALTH Minister Dr Nkosazana Zuma announced in Parliament on Wednesday that she is withdrawing her controversial health Bills to allow her department to further study submissions that had been made.
The bills will be resubmitted to the Cabinet next Wednesday for re-approval, she said in a special statement at the start of business in the House.
Opposition parties, the medical fraternity and pharmaceutical companies have been opposing the measures at hearings of Parliament’s health committee over the past week. One of the measures — the Medicines and Related Substances Bill — seeks to lower the price of medicines through generic substitutes and other measures, which have drawn fire from US pharmaceutical companies, who have threatened to pull out of SA, as well as from a US congressional committee which visited SA last month. Another of the Bills proposes a two-year term of national service for all medical graduates, which has sparked controversy and bitter resistance from the medical fraternity.
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