Recognising the need to improve child health, KwaZulu-Natal became the only province to scrap the provision of free formula milk in favour of promoting exclusive breast-feeding among pregnant women attending government antenatal facilities at the beginning of the year. By so doing, the province set the national agenda.
South Africa will move to an exclusive breastfeeding strategy and discontinue the practice of providing formula feed through hospitals and clinics, health minster Dr Aaron Motsoaledi announced yesterday (TUES).
HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria have dominated the headlines and received much of the world attention for several years - And rightly so.
OPINION:Misinformed scaremongering seems to have been the order of the day since the release of the National Health Insurance (NHI) Green Paper. South Africans have been subjected to a barrage of reports about how the proposed NHI is unaffordable, how it will increase the cost of labour and will push the economy into recession. by Di McIntyre.
OPINION: I am visiting the University of Cape Town from Australia ' this is the fourth consecutive year I have come to this physically beautiful city ' and I see in the media recently all sorts of comments on the proposed NHI. These comments are all almost hostile. But then these comments do not come from all sorts of people. By Gavin Mooney.
This week government finally released the Green Paper on the National Health Insurance system, which seeks to provide better health care for all. The paper will be followed by consultations with various stakeholders and the public over the next three months.
Every working person will contribute to the National Health Insurance (NHI) fund and everyone in the country will be entitled to 'a comprehensive package of care' starting from primary health care (PHC) and going right up to specialised hospitals, according to the Green Paper on NHI.
Health minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi is determined to revolutionise South Africa's health system and his short-term sights are set on the quality of healthcare delivery in the public sector and pricing in the private sector.
The Democratic Alliance has released a report on the assessment of top management at public hospitals in South Africa, which was compiled by the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA).
South Africans will for the first time know how Government is planning to introduce the long-awaited National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme when it is released after Wednesday's Cabinet meeting.
Every electoral ward is set to have a primary health care, nurse-driven team established as part of the National Health Insurance (NHI) system and specialist doctor teams will be assigned to districts where maternal and child mortality is high.
Brazil's Family Health Programme is widely recognised as the most impressive example worldwide of a rapidly scaled up, cost effective, comprehensive primary health care system.
'The case of change in health care financing in South Africa through the introduction of mandatory NHI health is both strong and urgent. The case for change should also be considered in the light of the lack of achievement of the Millennium Development Goals for health, and the stagnation and even deterioration in mortality rates and life expectancy.' ' Confidential National Health Insurance (NHI) Policy Proposal (February 2011)
Pregnant women seeking healthcare in Eastern Cape government facilities are facing abuse and substandard care placing them at high risk of death and injury, a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report has revealed.
Ahead of next week's launch of the National Health Insurance (NHI) proposal, Health Minister, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, made several announcements on Thursday, including a plan to employ hospital managers who will ensure better health outcomes.
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