Speech delivered by MEC for Health and Welfare Mr. Seapro Sekoati on the occasion of Polokwane/Mankweng Hospital Complex Open Day Polokwane Hospital Campus

17 September 2004

Programme Director
Colleagues in the Provincial Legislature
Mayors and Councillors
Government Officials
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am proud to be part of this august gathering whose aim is to showcase excellence to our people.

During this Open –Day we are accorded the opportunity to re-commit ourselves to our core values, as the Mankweng- Polokwane Health Complex of integrity, excellence, health and vitality, wisdom and success.

Only by being orientated to the needs of our clients, providing cost effective health service, by nurturing trust and respect, and enhancing teamwork and communication, ensuring equal opportunity, transparency and professionalism, can we achieve all the core values that we espouse.

At the core of our function is to deliver quality secondary and tertiary services, provide a training platform for health care professionals and conduct appropriate research. These are the tasks that we must not fail to accomplish. They are at the core of the mission of our existence as the Mankweng-Polokwane Health Complex.

The aim of establishing this complex is to provide secondary and tertiary health services to ensure that such services are optimally reconfigured to provide equitable access to efficient, high quality and cost effective care in a manner that is both affordable and sustainable in the medium and long term. Our view is that at this complex, we should be able to provide a comprehensive set of these specialised services including key referral specialities not available at regional hospitals. Indeed these services are available and others will still be made available. We are confident of the future because of the progress that we have made in the past eight years when this complex was established to serve as a tertiary institution of the Province.

These major tasks that we have been entrusted with present strategic challenges, ranging from the cross-border flow, recruitment and retention of scarce skilled personnel to accommodation for the establishment of tertiary and academic hospital and services.

Parliament has passed the National Health Act, this year in August. This Act strives towards reducing the gap between the rich and the poor with regard to access in the health sector.

The Act establishes a new dispensation in the provision of health care for all, providing a framework for a structured and uniform health system, capable of bringing together the various elements of the national health system whose ultimate objective is the progressive realization of the goal to provide a comprehensive and universal access to quality health care for all.

The Act imposes an obligation on us, as enshrined in the Constitution, to make sure that no one is refused emergency medical services, that our children and future generations, enjoy the right to basic health care services and that everyone of us enjoy the right to an environment that is not harmful to our health and well being.

This Act also makes provision for other obligations, some of which will eventually address such challenges that we are faced with as the complex. Other challenges relate to the human resources, and the establishment of academic health complex and tertiary services.

Our view is that the new dispensation as ushered in by this Act provides for the whole range of health issues, but we refer to these two because of their acute relevance to our situation.

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We are all aware of the dire shortage of health personnel in our institutions, particularly in this complex, which is charged with the responsibility to deliver specialised secondary and tertiary services.

This shortage can be ascribed to many factors. One and most critical among the many has been the consistent migration of our professionals to Europe, particularly the UK, to seek greener pastures and gain international exposure in the provision of health care services. Unfortunately the urge to seek greener pastures has overshadowed the need to gain experience hence once they leave, our professionals, do not return.

Government has made progress in the matter of curbing this skills migration while at the same time providing an opportunity for our professionals to gain international exposure.

This Act will help us implement and enforce the Memorandum of Understanding that the department of Health signed with the UK on the Code of Practice on the Ethical Recruitment of Health Workers. Through this initiative the issue of recruitment and retention of scarce skilled personnel in the developing countries and the creation of education and practice opportunities will be properly addressed.

As a developing Country, we are challenged to create a conducive environment and incentives for those of our professionals, who have migrated, to come back, but also for those who are with us.

Of most importance in this area of skills development is the provision in this Act for the establishment and strengthening of academic health complexes consisting of public health and academic institutions working together to educate and train our health care personnel and research on health services.

We are encouraged by the existence of the twinning arrangements that we have with Kimberly Hospital Complex in the Northern Cape and Valenciennes Hospital in France.
Through these arrangements we hope to provide a platform for our professionals to gain experience and exposure in their quest to provide better health services to our people.

The merger between the Medical University of Southern Africa and the University of the North is presenting a serious challenge and would also create unlimited opportunity for the province to develop and excel in the health sector.

Furthermore the merger will result in MEDUNSA in the medium to long term relocating to Polokwane. This necessitates the development of an academic hospital to support the obligatory functions of a medical school.

Our point of departure on this matter is that the merger has a potential to help reduce the skills gap in the province, as many of the medical specialists and health science professionals in general will be trained in our province. We will therefore have to find ways to ensure that the majority of the students, on completion are retained and work in the province.

Gradually our patients will no longer be referred to Gauteng Province hospitals because the referral facilities will be available in Limpopo. This will add more value to the services we are already rendering at the complex and other health institutions like Radiation oncology clinic, the renal unit, Nuclear medicine and other specialty clinics, and above all to our human capital in the health sector.

Other issues regarding the actual functioning and creation of support institutions for the merger are a process that all of us, together with the Education Ministry should engage to exorcise the negative energy, to bring about development and prosperity to our people irrespective of their geographic location.

Recently we passed the Traditional Health Practitioners bill, with its own challenges and ramifications. Part of the mandate bestowed on us by this bill culminating into an Act, is to ensure that our traditional healers contribute in the promotion of the health of the population of our country, promoting traditional health practices which comply with universally accepted health care norms and values with a view to improving the quality of life of patients and the general public, and liaison between traditional health practitioners and other health professionals.

We urge everybody to engage this bill and other legislative processes and contribute towards their final enactment.

We hope that today’s event and many others to come will assist to create more understanding of our health systems and appreciate the positive and essential role they play in our lives.

We take this opportunity to thank the management and staff of this complex for having organised this informative and successful event. We wish you healthy future lives.

I thank you.

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