Health Department's Performance Plan fails to address critical health challenges in North West

28 August 2018

The Democratic Alliance will make a submission to the North West Health Administrator, Jeanette Hunter, requesting her to change the draft of the Annual Performance Plan (APP) so that it addresses critical challenges within the Department of Health.

The APP that was presented today during the North West Department of Health Portfolio Committee meeting in Mahikeng is not worth the paper it is written on.

During the meeting, the DA objected to the Department's inability to demonstrate its commitment to addressing critical challenges in the delivery of health services in the province.

The DA will ask that the Health Administrator include the following strategic action plans:

- An overhaul of the emergency management system in all the health sector districts of the province to ensure and improve response time for ambulances. Such a system should ensure an alignment of ambulances, rescue services and firefighting services in the North West Province. The alignment of these critical emergency services will reduce the number of fatalities experienced in road accidents;

- Immediate steps that show commitment towards managing exposure to physical risk by upgrading security services in hospitals and clinics to ensure that doctors, nurses, patients and visitors are safe in hospitals and clinics;

- A business case for reduction of accruals which have increased to R1 billion, which is an increase of 40% in the past two financial years; and

- A commitment towards introducing an electronic filing system, especially in large district hospitals such as Potchefstroom Hospital where the manual filing system is compromising patient information and thus endangers the lives of patients.

It is every citizen’s constitutional right to have access to quality health services, a provision which the ANC has failed to uphold. The DA will continue to use all platforms to ensure that the people of North West receive quality and accessible health services.

Issued by Tutu Faleni, Democratic Alliance Provincial Spokesperson for Health, 28 August 2018