Mail & Guardian
Mail & Guardian

The Ten-Point Plan

2 min read

The 10-Point Plan

  1. Establish a coherent and vision-based executive-decision-making process, with inputs from a legislated consultation forum that can routinely identify system needs:
    — support a publicly embedded set of specific and time-bound targets
    — create sub-committees to focus on: HIV and Aids and TB; human resources, non- communicable diseases; quality assurance; national health information; nutrition; relationship between public and private sector; social determinants of health

  • Develop appropriate messaging for a communication campaign by the Minister and Presidency (with other key stakeholders), with a particular focus on ensuring the entire society addresses HIV/Aids and TB as society’s problem.

  • Implement a National Health Information system sufficient to ensure that all parts of the system have the required information to effectively achieve their responsibilities.

  • Promote quality, including measuring and benchmarking actual performance against standards for quality.

  • Define an appropriately decentralised and more accountable operational management model (including governance and capacity requirements) for health service delivery, including revised roles and responsibilities for the national department, provinces, districts, and public hospitals.

  • Bring in additional capacity and expertise to strengthen a result-based health system, particularly at the district level (including revised legislation to recruit foreign skills, partnerships with the private and public sectors, deployment and training for district health management teams, etc.).

  • Establish a human resource strategy with national norms and standards for staffing, linked to a package of care.

  • Develop a strategic focus on child and maternal health: — address constraints to districts reaching required PMTCT uptake — ensure maternal health systems are optimised — eliminate nutritional deficiencies for all children under three years of age

  • Consider the implementation of specialised national agencies to focus on the National Health Information system, quality assurance, certificates of need in relation to expensive technology, etc.

  • Develop an implementation strategy and collaboration/ partnerships to leverage funding, increase health sector efficiencies, and accelerate the implementation of the National Strategic Plan: — beginning with a social mobilisation campaign linked to World AIDS Day (1 December)

    • This article originally appeared in the Mail & Guardian newspaper as an advertorial supplement