“In the next five years, we will accelerate the provision of well-located housing and land to poor South Africans. To improve the quality of life of South Africans, to reduce poverty in all its dimensions and to strengthen our economy, we will attend to the health of our people. We must attend to the capacity of our hospitals and clinics,” said Ramaphosa as he tabled his State of the Nation Address on Thursday evening in Cape Town.

He told Parliament that “an 80-year-old grandmother cannot spend an entire day in a queue waiting for her medication".

“An ill patient cannot be turned away because there is a shortage of doctors and nurses. A woman in labour cannot have her unborn child’s life put in danger because the ambulance has taken too long to come,” the president said.

As part of the work, the government must urgently improve the quality of the health system, he said. 

“We are finalising the Presidential Health Summit Compact, which draws on the insights and will mobilise the capabilities of all key stakeholders to address the crisis in our clinics and hospitals.”

He said that government was far advanced in revising the National Health Insurance (NHI) bill's detailed plan of implementation, which included accelerating quality of care initiatives in public facilities, building human resources capacity, the establishment of the NHI fund structure, and costing the administration of the NHI fund.

"We remain concerned about rising HIV infections rates, particularly among young women, and the relatively low numbers of men testing for HIV and starting treatment. We will intensify our work to implement the 90-90-90 strategy to end HIV as a public health threat, which includes increasing the number of people on treatment by at least another two million by December 2020," Ramaphosa added.

In 2014, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and partners launched the 90–90–90 targets, with the aim of diagnosing 90 percent of all HIV-positive persons, provide antiretroviral therapy (ART) for 90 percent of those diagnosed, and achieve viral suppression for 90 percent of those treated by 2020.

African News Agency (ANA)