Healthcare

Participate in the second Global Health Watch, by submitting human interest stories and case studies. We are calling on activists, health workers and academics from around the world to submit case studies and testimonies or stories based on individual or group experiences to supplement the second edition of the report and reinforce its main themes.

Human rights in health care is not just an apartheid-era issue, but one that still challenges health professionals in South Africa today, the director of the Steve Biko Foundation, Nkosinathi Biko, said on Wednesday.

The Health Sector Charter originally proposed by the Department of Health (DOH) failed to grasp the opportunity to empower the large number of employees in the public sector. If press reports are correct, this situation continues.

South Africans, like the citizens of many other African countries, suffer from a number of serious health problems. As a result, average life expectancy at birth has declined from 62 years in 1990 to a mere 43 years in 2006.

CAPE TOWN As a three-year agreement granting special allowances to health- care professionals with scarce skills and those placed in rural areas draws to a close, the health department has embarked on an overhaul of the remuneration packages of the entire sector.

Negotiators on the draft health-care charter are gearing up for tough talks this week on a new government proposal to get the private sector to hand over 2,5% of after-tax profit to a special fund to improve public health.

Four million health workers are needed to combat the chronic shortage around the world, a report from the World Health Organization has warned.

The Free State Health Department has allocated the lion's share of its budget to Public Health Care (PHC) services. Health MEC Sakhiwo Belot said more than R1.3 billion would go the PHC services through the district health system.

The People's Health Movement, a global network of civil society groups, researchers, activists and teachers involved in health, proposes the launch of a global campaign on the Right to Health. PHM would like to invite civil society organizations, interested individuals and groups to participate in discussing the possibility of hosting such a campaign in South Africa. It would also contribute to building civil society for the Third People's Health Assembly, planned for 2010 at an African venue (to be determined). This edition of Critical Health Perspectives sketches the background to the campaign and some of the thinking behind it.

THIS promises to be another year of controversy, confusion and anxiety for South Africans on the health-care front, as government comes under renewed pressure to deal with its human resource crisis, speed up provision of AIDS drugs and implement a raft of new laws.