Trade union Solidarity said on Tuesday that experience in the North West province clearly showed that government was not capable of running health care services.  

This came after media reports indicated that the Mafikeng Provincial Hospital was only running due to the services of temporary staff, while two clinics in the province had had to close their doors as a result of security problems arising from nonpayment for three months of security service providers.  Apparently at some hospitals, there are only three midwives to cope with 48 deliveries, while medicine shortages were said to be paralysing the province’s health service.  According to Morné Malan, researcher at the Solidarity Research Institute, the shortcomings and failures of public health care in North-West were not limited to that province.  He commented that it was inconceivable that government believed it could improve health care for all in SA by means of the proposed National Health Insurance (NHI) and said that “expanding government control over health care would simply mean that failures would happen at an even larger scale and would be more far-reaching.”  Malan advised that on 21 August Solidarity would be holding a crisis summit on the proposed NHI involving leading medical and legal experts, as well as economists.

• Read Solidarity’s press statement at Solidarity News

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