3856782 – University of the Western Cape
Reflection
Health system shortcomings continue to endanger the health and lives of the citizens of South Africa, resulting in a loss of confidence amongst its users. In this picture, I have used the dog that is treading in the water to represent the patient. More so, the patients that make use of public health services. The young girl behind the dog is viewed as healthcare professionals such as physiotherapists that are always urging people in need to receive treatment and get professional opinions.
As seen in the picture, the girl is the only one trying to help the dog, this reflects how understaffed clinics and public hospitals in the system are, which usually leads to waiting time in the public sector being prolonged which dissatisfies many sick people who cannot afford the more efficient private medical care. The public system serves the vast majority of the population, but is chronically underfunded and understaffed. The patients often feel obligated to take matters in their ‘own hands’ and help themselves as depicted above where the dog with good reason, uses his natural reflexes is swimming away from the young girl and tries to help himself out of danger and thus saving his own life. Due to lack of trust, patients ignore the health professionals’ extra-effort- depicted in the way the young girl is reaching out to the dog- and rather chooses to be independent of the doctors and rehabilitation specialists to avoid the high possibility of disappointment. This in turn is what ultimately allows for spread of communicable diseases and the worsening of disability thus also prolonging rehabilitation. This is one possible reason for the increase in mortality rate due to these diseases in South Africa, especially among the poorer and disadvantaged communities.
The pool in which the girl and dog is in, represents the list of predicaments and the water in the pool is seen as the large volume of problems filling up this list on a daily basis. Due to the public sector being insufficiently funded, it is incapable of dealing with the issues. The health professionals and patients therefore all suffer together due to this insufficiency and thus causing the patients to lose confidence in the South African health system. I chose this picture because I personally feel it best depicts how a patient feels in the public sector of medical care in South Africa.
Academic Literature
According to Breakfast (2018), following inspections by the Office of Health Standards (OHS) in 2016/17, only five out of 696 public health facilities managed to meet the 80% “pass mark” set by the Department of Health. This speaks to how a lack of funding for public health services in the country can lead to the deterioration of facilities. According to a 2009 article in the Mail & Guardian, South Africa is producing 0,58 doctors per 1 000 people. Brazil and Mexico, with a similar gross domestic product per capita, are producing nearly two doctors per 1 000. These statistics prove that South Africa has a considerable shortage of medical professionals. This could be due to professionals choosing to seek employment in the private sector and abroad. Such a lack of staff further perpetuates the issue of frustration among users of public health facilities, as they endure prolonged waiting times and often receive inadequate medical attention. This leads to the spread of communicable diseases such as HIV and Tubercolosis. For example, according to Pillay-van Wyk et al. (2016, p. e642-e653) in 2012, HIV/AIDS caused the most deaths (29.1%). According to tbfacts.org (n.d), South Africa is one of the countries with the highest incidences of TB in the world with estimated incidences of 322,000 cases of active TB in 2017. Private medical aid schemes only provide for 16% of the population according to Health Policy Project (2016). Consequently this means that 84% of South Africa’s population have no alternative to using the poorly administrated public health facilities.
References
Breakfast, S. (2018, June 6). The South African. Public health fail: Report reveals that SA’s health facilities are in crisis. Retrieved from https://www.thesouthafrican.com/public-health-fail-report-reveals-that-sas-health-facilities-are-in-crisis/
Mail & Guardian. (2009, October 21).Mail & Guardian. Parliament hears of poor state of public hospitals. Retrieved from https://mg.co.za/article/2009-10-21-parliament-hears-of-poor-state-public-hospitals
Pillay-van Wyk, V., Msemburi, W., Laubscher, R., Dorrington, R. E., Groenewald, P., Glass, T., … Bradshaw, D. (2016). Mortality trends and differentials in South Africa from 1997 to 2012: second National Burden of Disease Study. The Lancet Global Health, 4(9), e642-e653. Retrieved from https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(16)30113-9/fulltext
TBFACTS.ORG. (n.d.). TB Statistics for South Africa | National & provincial. Retrieved from https://www.tbfacts.org/tb-statistics-south-africa/
Health Policy Project. (2016, May). Health Policy Project. Health Financing Profile: South Africa. Retrieved from https://www.healthpolicyproject.com/pubs/7887/SouthAfrica_HFP.pdf
One thought on “South African Health System- Is it a scourge?- Kelsey Gerbach”
Hi Kelsey!
I found your assignment very interesting. Your interpretation of this picture was genius. You certainly painted a good picture of how the health system in South Africa can be experienced, and you also backed it up with research. It’s scary how few medical professionals there are in your country, and that only 5 out of 696 health facilities made the pass marks! It’s hard for me to understand how it must feel in South Africa. In Norway we are only about 6 million people, and we got free health care, and low poverty. Diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS are virtually non existing here, so it really can’t be compared. Even though we are so much less people than you, it’s still an important political debate on whether or not we should privatize the health care or not in Norway. Because privatizing is making it easier for the rich to get good health care, and the poor are stuck in line for the state hospitals.
Now over to feedback on the structure of your assignment. I thought the structure was very good. You caught my attention at once, and then supported your statements with relevant literature. The text was also very consistent. Your references is correctly written, explained and relative to the rest of your assignment. It would have been interesting to see some literature that shows the balance between the rich and the poor in your country. I think this would have explained why this is such a big problem even more, but all in all I thought it was a very good assignment. Excellent work!