Hlongwa, at the Annual Women's Dialogue
7 August 2006
In less than 48 hours the whole nation will be focused on commemorating the
50th anniversary of the historic march by brave South African women against the
evil system of apartheid.
As the nation prepares to observe this important event, you as women in
health, inspired by the ideals and values that guided those 20 000 women on
that fateful day in 1956, are meeting here today to reflect on your working
conditions and develop strategies to improve service delivery and the lives of
women in health.
While it is important to discuss all of these issues it will be most
important that you put patients at the centre of every programme of action you
are going to develop. I hope that the women who do the most important tasks at
the coalface of healthcare delivery - nurses, doctors, social workers,
community health workers and others - are well represented in this meeting. If
they are not represented and if in this dialogue we only have managers, their
secretaries and other paper pushers from administrative offices, the
discussions will not be worthwhile and there is a risk that the solutions you
propose will be irrelevant.
In my view it is important that you have a good representation of these
women because they are the ones who represent health to the patients and
communities. It is their dignity and integrity that is impaired each time
newspapers print negative stories with headlines such as "A nurse from hell
killed my baby" and "Ambulance lost my brotherâ. Therefore they must be the
ones who play a leading role when we discuss solutions to these problems.
Women constitute the majority of employees in the Department; they are the
face of healthcare delivery and it is proper and correct that they take centre
stage in discussions to build a quality healthcare system that is caring,
responsive and patient centred.
I have been told that females constitute 77 percent of the total staff
employed in the Department and 59 percent of senior and management positions
are held by women. The question therefore that you must ask is: âHas this led
to an improvement in the working conditions for female employees? Do females in
lower positions find that they are now more easily promotable than before?â In
short you need to answer the question; âDoes our human resources recruitment
and retention strategy support women?â
What I have observed in the 130 days since is that all our facilities lack
the necessary supportive environment for all staff including female employees.
For instance none of our facilities, the old ones and the ones we are building
now, has facilities for staff to relax and have coffee during breaks. I do not
understand why such an overwhelmingly female dominated organisation has not yet
seen it appropriate to have nursery facilities for children of staff members at
their places of work. These are small things that make a big difference when
employees consider whether to remain in the Department or leave to
opportunities elsewhere.
It also seems to me that you have to define in specific terms what is it you
mean when you say one of the goals of this dialogue is to improve service
delivery.
Last Friday we launched the TB Crisis Plan. What role are women in health
going to play to mobilise community support behind this plan and ensure that we
reduce the stigma attached to this disease and improve the cure rates?
You must also apply your collective wisdom to help the Department in its
effort to reduce the number of mothers and children dying during childbirth.
The maternal mortality ratio for Gauteng is currently estimated at 112 per 100
000 live births.
Two weeks ago I participated in the launch of the Mental Health Consumer
Advocacy Movement. This is a movement formed by mental health patients
themselves to champion their rights and to create an environment in which they
are accepted by the communities in which they live. I challenge you to place
mental health high on your agenda.
This aspect of healthcare has been given insufficient attention and shifted
down the list of priorities for a very long time. Our women who work in mental
health facilities require a lot of your support to do their difficult work with
integrity, dignity and honesty. We must give them the courage to speak out
whenever male colleagues sexually assault their patients as reported in the
media in the past months.
This then means that the Department's programme for observing the 16 days of
activism against violence on women and children this year has to be one of the
products of this meeting. This campaign cannot simply be a single event under
the trees at Zoo Lake. It has to be a rolling campaign that captures public
imagination. Our health professionals are the people who daily deal with the
devastating impact of this violence on people's physical, mental and emotional
wellbeing and it is for this reason that our campaign must be high profile.
This campaign has to include a focus on our own health professionals, who
daily face harassment, insults and sometimes assault from some of the patients
and their families. We must support these staff members and strengthen their
resolve to make a difference in people's lives.
I am told that our Department together with the International Labour
Organisation (ILO), the International Council of Nurses (ICN), the World Health
Organisation (WHO) and Public Services International (PSI) has successfully
implemented a pilot programme to address violence at the workplace. Ms Marion
Borcherds has been driving this programme and I hope there will be time in the
programme for her to share with you some of the positive outcomes of this
programme.
Programme Director, as you deliberate over these issues and others I want
you to draw strength from imbokodo, the women that confronted the apartheid
Prime Minister JG Strijdom on 9 August 1956. Among the leaders who led this
historic march were Helen Joseph and Lilian Ngoyi, two outstanding leaders
after whom we have named two of our health facilities.
As we observe 50 years of their struggle we in the public health sector must
embrace their spirit and own their vision. When things were not going right in
our country and the apartheid regime was tightening its repressive noose on
people's human rights, these women did not look the other way and keep quiet.
They raised their voices and moved to the forefront of the struggle that
brought us the democracy we are enjoying today. You must do the same when the
human rights of patients are trampled on.
We must therefore find a way to celebrate these leaders and others such
Oliver Tambo and Chris Hani whose names we have used to label our facilities.
Their names have now become a heritage for us in the public health sector and
we therefore have a duty to treat this heritage with dignity and respect.
Malibongwe igama lamakhosikazi!
I thank you
Issued by: Department of Health, Gauteng Provincial Government
7 August 2006
