25 April 2002
The celebration of the eighth anniversary of South African Freedom Day on 27 April comes at the conclusion of the ANC focus Month on Health and the Chris Hani Health Trail launched by the SACP on 10 April (the ninth anniversary of the murder of Chris Hani).
On this very important occasion for us as South Africans, we are of the view that we should always celebrate our achievements we have made as a country thus far on the health front. We should acknowledge the improvements through the continued building of clinics, provision of clean water to more than seven million people and free medical treatment for children under the age of seven and pregnant women.
These are the achievements we must celebrate since our democratic breakthrough in 1994. As we celebrate Freedom Day, we must also focus our energies and resources towards the building of an efficient public health system is central in addressing the massive public health crisis we face as a country. The majority of our people do not have adequate access to good quality, good service, efficient and affordable public health care.
As the SACP we also use this Freedom Day to welcome the recent cabinet statement on HIV/AIDS and the prevention of mother-to-child transmission. This is a necessary step forward in developing an holistic approach, led by government, to dealing with the HIV/AIDS pandemic based on dynamically addressing prevention, awareness, treatment, education and care. We are firmly of the view that this statement provides the basis to unite the country behind a common approach in dealing with HIV/AIDS. We call on all our people and the country as a whole to use this statement as a basis to forge unity of purpose and action in the struggle against HIV/AIDS.
It is in this context that the SACP will continue to criticise the role of the private sector in perpetuating the inequalities in the provision of health care. About two thirds of our country's health resources are held in the private sector at the direct expense of the public health system which is serving the majority of our people. The private medical aid industry in our country serves less than seven million people. In line with apartheid and capitalist patterns of ownership, less than 9% are black. In other words, the overwhelming majority of poor and working people are not benefiting from the services provided by the medical aid industry. By and large, the rich are the sole benefactors in line with skewed distribution of resources.
Over and above this, the medical aid industry practices widespread discrimination. People living with HIV/AIDS are getting insufficient benefits and are not entitled to maximum benefits. This industry also unfairly and unjustifiably discriminates against the elderly who need the most from medical aid. This means that the majority of our people are denied access to good quality health care and medical aid benefits. The SACP strongly believes that the medical aid industry is a central part of the broader untransformed financial sector. For these reasons, the SACP reiterates its call for the transformation of the medical aid industry in favour of poor and working people.
As we celebrate Freedom Day, the SACP also seeks to highlight the challenge of dealing with the crisis facing our health system, compounded by unemployment, poverty, high prices of essential medicines, inadequate resources for public healthcare and the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The SACP also welcomes the fact that government is exploring the establishment of a National Social Security System, an important step in cushioning our people from the worst forms of poverty. In this context we re-iterate our call for the investigation into the issue of establishing a National Insurance Health Scheme as part of a comprehensive Social Security Programme.
On this occasion of celebrating Freedom Day, the SACP recommits itself to be part of the struggle to defend, consolidate, advance and deepen our democracy. We pledge ourselves to work with government and our people to intensify the struggle to meet the basic needs of our people. The SACP is of the view that in order to meet the basic needs of all our people, we need to roll back the capitalist market, particularly in the provision of basic services.
Capitalism, remains the single biggest threat to the realisation of our goal of bettering the lives of our people. Therefore to us the SACP, the struggle for the eradication of poverty is simultaneously a struggle against capitalism.
CONTACT
Mazibuko Kanyiso Jara (surname Jara)
Department of Media, Information and Publicity
South African Communist Party
Tel - 011 339 3621
Fax - 011 339 4244
Cell - 083 651 0271
Email - sacp1@wn.apc.org