Research question:
Is South Africa’s public healthcare system adequately servicing the population?
Aims of the research:
The research is aimed at determining the number of people that use public healthcare in South Africa and to assess whether the public hospitals and clinics adequately serve these people. It also looks at the costs at public hospitals and whether government spends adequately to subsidise health and medical care. It further assesses whether the number of trained medical personnel meets the requirements of the people seeking medical care.
Literature review:
Research was carried out across various pieces of literature to identify the key areas that need to be assessed to conclude on the research question.
As identified by the article “Healthcare in South Africa” (2013), South Africa’s healthcare system has two separate sectors, namely the private sector and the public sector. The private healthcare sector is relatively small compared to the public sector. The private sector offers high quality medical care that can match a number of European countries, however the cost is significantly high and therefore, makes it out of reach of the average South African citizen.
A similar titled article “Healthcare in South Africa” (2012), states that the government contributes 40% of the public healthcare sector’s expenditure. Despite this, the public health sector is responsible for providing medical services to approximately 80% of the population and is therefore under
Many would agree that a worthy, controlled health system, above all, should essentially contribute to good health. The responsibility of a health care system is that the organization of people, institutions, and resources deliver the health care services required and meet the health needs of focus populations. Another duty that the health care systems stimulate is the reduction of inequality to race, gender, social status and religion. Each health care system is different when looking at specific countries across the world, however some countries are more similar than others, such as France and Canada’s health care system. These two countries have numerous similarities when examining their health care systems, conversely that does not denote that both France and Canada are just as equivalent as the other. When observing countless aspects, such as longevity and infant mortality, as well as a lot of the inputs such as doctors or beds per capita, and of course the total expenditure on health as a percentage of GDP over the year, it is seen that France has a better and more enhanced health care system than Canada.
In our world each country has a set of standards to follow in order to establish health care insurance for people in different communities. The state contributes about 40% of all the expenditures on health while the public health sector delivers 80% of the population. Many resources are concentrated in the private health sector. These resources see to the health needs of the remaining 20% of the population. Public health consumes around 11% of the government’s total budget. The way the resources are allotted, and the standard of health care delivered, varies from country to country. Although there are similarities between South Africa and the United States regarding healthcare, South Africa remains at a lower
Having access to quality healthcare is major part of one’s life however the cost of care has been on the rise over the past decades and continue to rise every day due to many situation such
Medic-aid: This covers the destitute, pregnant women, individuals with severe physical disabilities, mental illnesses or addictions, seniors that require long-term care and people that need government support because of their financial status. But People in this category are not given much attention by the doctors as it is clearly written ‘poor’ all over their faces as soon as they present the type of insurance they possess. This means doctors lose money each time such patient consults them. A reluctant behavior is noticed by this group of people to seek healthcare even when it is needed, as many of them feel they will not be attended to or given proper care, due to the fact that they are unable to pay. Unfortunately, this is one of the causes of depression, morbidity and mortality.
I have chosen the topic “Examine the financial characteristics of health care delivery along with managing costs, revenues, and human
One of the major problems facing our country today is the healthcare crisis. The inequality in our current healthcare system has created a huge gap in the difference between the level and the quality of healthcare that different people receive. Having an improved and reliable health care system available for everyone should be a priority that the government must make available. There are countries whose health care system meets the needs of the patients while there are countries whose health care systems need a great amount of overhaul for them to be able to attend to their patients. In this essay I will discuss the healthcare crisis and the differences in many countries
Healthcare financing is proven to be challenging. A balance between adequate access, acceptable quality and affordable cost are the main objectives of a healthcare system (Paterson, 2014, p. 13). The island of Tekram is finding extremely difficult to achieve a solution to the current crisis of their healthcare system. The objective to this case study is to recommend a new healthcare strategy to island government.
The cost of care has been a growing problem throughout developed nations during the last 15 years. For example, across 34 nations that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the average per capita health care expenditure increased by more than 70 percent between 2000 and 2010. However, the biggest spenders — such as
Assignment I: Article Critique on “Comparative Performance of Private and Public Healthcare Systems in Low-and Middle-Income Countries: A Systematic Review”
Apart from having the public sector, we also have a well established private sector The private sector absorbs 32% of the total expenditure on health in the country. . In a year, the private sector has 27, 000 admissions for in-patient treatment, undertakes 13,000 surgical operations and delivers over 2,000 babies. Some people choose private hospitals instead of public hospitals due to better service quality and admission procedures. There are reliable doctors and nursing officers and their attitude are courteous and they are more hospitable and are ready to help.
In Southern Africa, the health systems also struggle with governmental inefficiencies. An example of this can been seen when examining the story of a doctor from Botswana in the early 2000’s. Ndwapi Ndwapi was born and raised in Botswana, but attended medical school in the United States (Hilts). When Ndwapi returned to Botswana in order to work, even though he was specialized, he was forced to follow the government’ health system and start working at a low ranking job. Not only was this a low ranking job but also the pay was $2,500 a year, which was significantly less than he could have made working in the United States. Initially this caused Ndwapi to be angry and frustrated, but he stuck with it because he understood that there was a great need for physician in his country, especially ones that understood
Global Health has evolved over time in response to inequities resulting from racial, ethnic, economic, and other disparities among the world’s population. The World Health Organization and other global health response organizations, as well as individual governments define and gather relevant statistics that can assess a nations overall health status as compared to that of other nations. In doing so, the comparisons identify countries with high levels of negative health outcomes, how well they are being addressed, and what social, political, and economic factors contribute to such health disparities. South Africa is a nation that has complex health care needs and shortcomings even though it is the second wealthiest nation in Africa.
Availability – Health being a state subject, every state government have to make efforts to attain the state led, country and millennium developmental goals. As government alone cannot achieve this alone, it is seeking help of private players to overcome the availability and quality issues of public sector.
Even though it has been 20 years that south Africa has underwent the change from apartheid to a constitutional democratic south Africa, when looking at the healthcare in South Africa one will see the fact that the is an unequal access to resources by South Africans. this is seen by the division of hospitals into two section namely the public sector and the private sector which requires medical insurance of a person to pay out of their pocket with the government sending almost the same amount of money on both of the sectors whereas the public sector catering for plus-minus 84% of the south African population and the private sector only catering for plus-minus 16% of the population.
Due to the apartheid regime of South Africa prior to 1994; the South African health care system has been left fragmented with the level of health care provided to the individual being based on their racial backgrounds, with the white minority