What are some of the challenges around the implementation of the National Strategic Plan?
The biggest implementation challenge concerns human resources – particularly regarding the health component. This is a big challenge for business too: how do we get the public and private health sectors to work in synergy? The private sector is absent when it comes to providing anything other than looking after their relatively small number of HIV/AIDS patients on medical schemes. The public health sector has been dumped with the whole thing. It can’t generate the doctors and nurses needed overnight. We need a sensible strategy to work with what we’ve got. We need serious discussions between the public and private sectors on how to manage this. The public health system is bursting at the seams – we do not have enough counsellors, pharmacists, etc in rural areas and yet there is a surplus of staff in the private sector. But to be fair to the private sector, any suggestions of help from them in the past have been rebuffed by Tshabalala-Msimang.
