MEC’s Speech at the Rural Doctors Association of Southern Africa Gala Dinner

23 September 2004

On Monday we received a delegation from the Department of Health in Uganda. During their stay they had visited some of our highly malaria endemic areas all of which are rural in character. Through interaction with them we both learned and shared knowledge and experience on this matter, but also on other common health related issues.

Our view is that Africans must come together within the context of Nepad and build partnerships and mobilise all the resources for the success of our continent.

We must support efforts made by our governments in various SADC forums to strengthen social, economic and political programs to ensure that we find lasting solutions to problems confronting our region.

We believe that the Rural Doctors Association of Southern Africa (RUDASA) will embrace this call and contribute efforts to build a better Africa for all.

One challenge that developing countries face in the course of the delivery of health care for our people is the unprecedented migration of our health professionals to more appeasing regions of the world.

This problem is also common to us as the country and the province.

Nevertheless government has never rested to find lasting solutions to this broader challenge of the migration of health professionals from rural to urban areas, from the public to the private sector, and from our country, region and continent to the western countries.

The introduction of one year community service for all health professionals, except the professional nurses, who will starting this service next year, has helped us to ensure that those of our people living in the historically disadvantaged and marginalize parts of our country have access to health professionals.

Government has further introduced and allocated budget for rural and scarce skills allowances targeting full time health professionals working in designated areas and professionals in specified categories regardless of the geographic areas in which they work.

In order to boost these initiatives, but also to respond to the need for our people and health professionals to gain international exposure, the National Department of Health entered into an agreement with the United Kingdom on the Code of Practice on the Ethical Recruitment of Health Workers.

Through this agreement our health professionals are accorded the opportunities to study and work in the UK up to two (2) years, while also allowing health professional from UK to work in our country’s underserved and rural areas.

Through the twinning program between our health institutions and those in other provinces like the Kimberly Hospital Complex in Northern Cape and those in Europe like Valenciennes Hospital in France, we hope to provide an opportunity to our professionals to sharpen their knowledge and skills in order to meet the health needs of our people.

At the same time we will engage other governments like we did with the Cuban government to allow Doctors to work in our health facilities

We are of the view though, that long-term solution to this challenge of equitable distribution of health professionals in the rural areas lies in our ability to produce health personnel.

The National Health Act provides for, among others, the establishment of and corporation between public health and academic institutions to educate and provide experience for our health professionals. Only through this exercise can we produce local personnel to meet the challenge we face.

Of course we are producing highly qualified and skilled health professionals and we hope by engaging in this exercise of establishing health complexes we will streamline and sustain the skilling of our professionals.

Through the few interventions that we have elaborated we hope to turn the tide against migration of our professionals from rural to urban areas, public to private sector and undeveloped to developed areas.

Together as RUDASA working with government, we must continue to find other ways to ensure that our health facilities are staffed with adequately skilled health professionals working in humane conditions and exposed to a variety of educational opportunities.

As government we are committed, in a people’s contract, to engage in a dialogue and collaboration with all the stakeholders to remedy the challenges faced by our health professionals and our people as we meet the objective of providing better and quality health care for all.

We thank those of you who opted to stay and work in rural areas to ensure that our people have access to quality health care.

We are looking forward to progressive resolutions emanating from this conference on how to meet all the challenges that we face in the health sector.

I wish you all the best.

Thank you

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