Health disparities

This is a report which makes use of the data stored in the ReHMIS data base. It should be of use to all who collect and make use of data about the health of people living in Mpumalanga Province, and about its health services. The report is written with the approach that health services should best be provided in relation to human needs. Therefore it attempts to demonstrate the extent of human health needs across the province and to relate the actual provision of services to these needs. In many cases a normative approach is apparent, and this is inevitable since otherwise it would not be possible to form an opinion about the equitable distribution of available resources in response to need.

Women are numerically dominant in virtually all health care disciplines except the medical profession. This anomaly is rooted in developments in Western medicine during the 16th and 17th centuries when knowledge of anatomy, physiology and the causes of diseases regained a scientific and theoretical base after the hiatus of the medieval period. Medical training was then established in the universities and the role of wise women and female healers was increasingly discredited and relegated to the treatment of women and those who could not afford the care of learned male physicians.