The Portfolio Committee on Health has been briefed by the Health Department at Parliament on the National Health Insurance (NHI) Pilot Districts Evaluation Report. A report on the Polity site says the committee welcomed the report, but raised concerns regarding the challenges that were experienced during the implementation phase of the NHI pilot projects.
Briefing the committee, the Health Minister, Dr Zweli Mkhize, said South Africa is amongst the countries that are becoming unable to explain the delay of the implementation of universal healthcare. “We are no longer dealing with a matter of if we should introduce it, we are dealing with a matter of when it must be introduced,” said Mkhize.
Responding to the concerns raised by the committee, Mkhize said it will take a while to get everything right. Furthermore, he said, the concerns expressed by the committee on the issues concerning congestion, understaffing, overcrowded facilities and poor infrastructure, need more and closer concentration.
Mkhize reiterated that the uncertainties that were highlighted by the committee will be addressed as addressing them will ensure the implementation of NHI. The committee welcomed the report and appreciated the success on all the ten indicators that were used. Most of the indicators, according to Mkhize, are innovative and are meant to focus on strengthening the systems. The committee also voiced its concerns on the challenges that were identified.
But the Democratic Alliance (DA) said: “Government’s own findings on the pilots indicated the country was not ready for a phase two, and far from ready from implementing the NHI.” According to a report in The Citizen, the DA said the failures in the project show that South Africa’s health system was nowhere near ready for universal health cover. The NHI piloting phase was based on piloting 10 programmes, in all nine provinces and across 11 districts.
The report says unimpressed by the department’s efforts was the DA’s Siviwe Gwarube, who sat on the portfolio committee on health in parliament. According to Gwarube, government’s own findings on the pilots indicated the country was not ready for a phase two, and far from ready from implementing the NHI.
By government’s own admission, it was difficult to assess the overall impact of the interventions placed at the various pilot sites due to a lack of control groups, baseline data measures and variations. What the DA took issue with was the NHI’s phase one outcomes could not inform how phase two would be rolled out. According to the report, the first phase of the NHI pilot did not involve developing a new funding model for healthcare in South Africa, but was focused on piloting various health system strengthening interventions.
[link url="https://www.polity.org.za/article/parliament-welcomes-evaluation-of-phase-one-implementation-of-interventions-in-nhi-pilot-districts-2020-03-06"]Full report on the Polity site[/link]
[link url="https://www.hst.org.za/publications/NonHST%20Publications/nhi_evaluation_report_final_14%2007%202019.pdf"]NHI Evaluation Report[/link]
[link url="https://citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/health/2251223/sa-nowhere-near-ready-for-universal-health-cover-da/"]Full report in The Citizen[/link]