This is according to the Treatment Action Campaign's (TAC) General Secretary, Anele Yawa. He says today’s visit to the National Health Insurance’s (NHI) pilot sites by the Parliament’s Portfolio Committee for Health will not yield any positive results. 

Yawa says the portfolio committee has visited public health care facilities in the Free State before and not much has since improved. Yawa spoke in reference to the Mofumahadi Manapo Regional Hospital in Qwaqwa, where a large number of patients were redirected to nearby hospitals because of a shortage of resources and medical staff at the hospital.

"In that hospital patients are not being attended to. There are many issues which indicate that the public health care system is not operational. The problem, however, does not lie with medical health care practitioners, it lies with the authorities. The parliament has been paying these sites visits, but afterwards nothing improves on the ground. These visits are not going to solve the problems on the ground," he says.

Katleho Morapela/OFM News