and Southern Africa Regional Management Team of United Nations Children's Fund
(Unicef)
21 March 2006
Greetings
It is a pleasure for me to address this meeting on this important day in the
history of our country, the national Human Rights Day. On this day, we remember
our heroes and heroines who fell in our victorious struggle for human rights.
It relates particularly to the massacre of peaceful protestors at Sharpeville
in 1960.
Programme director, I would like to thank Unicef for inviting me to address
this meeting of your representatives from east and southern Africa.
It is critical that there is regular interaction between governments and
representatives of United Nations agencies in order to ensure that there is
mutual understanding of the challenges facing various countries and how these
should be tackled. As the Ministry of Health in South Africa, we have made
effort to facilitate this interaction and build the relationship, which we
believe is critical in addressing the health and social challenges facing
Africa.
This meeting comes at a right time as we are involved in global discussion
on increasing access to HIV and AIDS prevention, treatment and care. We are
very impressed by the progress that has been made at various consultations as
we build up to the United Nations (UN) General Assembly at the end of May. The
world is finally coming to realise that unless we address the challenges of
poverty and underdevelopment, hunger, illiteracy and gender inequality, we will
not make an impact in curbing the spread of HIV infection and reducing the
impact of AIDS.
South Africa has made an effort to ensure that we broaden the understanding
of global objective of universal access. In terms of our Constitution as a
country, universal access means that we progressively make quality services
available in an equitable manner to ensure that all South Africans who choose
to utilise any of these services can have a reasonable access to them.
As part of this progressive realisation of the right of access, we believe
we need pool together our efforts as government, UN agencies and other
collaborating partners. We need to complement each other in order to achieve
universal access to prevention, care and treatment programmes.
Programme Director, the last World Health Day had a theme: make every mother
and child count. We observed this day with a community in Limpopo. We
highlighted the need to change today's world reality where many women die
during pregnancy or as a result of delivery each year and where millions of
children die before celebrating their fifth birthday.
Through our healthy lifestyle programme, we want to ensure that every
pregnancy and delivery is a safe experience. We are emphasising the need to
care for the health of babies before and after birth to ensure that they have a
healthy start to life.
The health of women and children is an important indicator in the world's
effort to meet the Millennium Development Goals relating to health. These goals
include addressing the challenges of hunger and lack of access to safe water,
reducing maternal and child mortality and begin to reverse the incidence of
infectious diseases like HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria by 2015.
As a country we conducted the second South African Demographic and Health
Survey in 2003 and we are preparing to release this report, which evaluates, to
a certain extent, the progress we are making with regard particularly to
maternal and child health.
There are positive indications with regard to infant mortality and mortality
of children under five years. The proportion of births that were attended to by
either a nurse or doctor has increased from 84% in 1998 to 92% in 2003. This
can be attributed to the increased access to health services both in terms of
availability of health facilities in various communities and free health
services for pregnant and lactating women as well as children under the age of
six years.
The positive developments around maternal and child health indicates that we
are on the correct path and we need to sustain our efforts to further improve
the lives of women and children.
We are intensifying the implementation of the School Health Policy to ensure
that we cater for the health needs of learners in particular. We are also
strengthening the cold chain to ensure sustainable and safe supply of vaccines
and intensify our Expanded Programme on Immunisation with campaigns aimed at
increasing immunisation coverage amongst our communities.
South Africa has been selected to present country documentation on Polio
Eradication at the African Region Certification Commission (ARCC) in October
this year. We will use this opportunity to share our experiences with regard to
the joint efforts we have had with Lesotho and Swaziland on the polio
eradication including the work of our Inter-country Certification
Committee.
We appreciate Unicefâs support in the implementation of several child
survival strategies such as the Growth Monitoring and Promotion (GMP), Baby
Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI), Micronutrient Deficiency Control and Food
Fortification and implementation of the World Health Organisation (WHO) 10
steps to manage severe malnutrition. The 10 steps to managing severe
malnutrition are being implemented in three provinces with intention of
covering other provinces during the course of the year.
Close to 180 health facilities have been declared baby friendly in the
country and Vitamin A coverage rates for children 6 - 11 months is above 85%
nationally. A survey to establish the impact of our national food fortification
programme has been completed and the outcomes will indicate if we are making
any difference in improving the nutritional status of our people.
More than 77% of our health facilities were providing services to reduce the
risk of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV by the end of last year and these
services are being expanded to other facilities.
We are concerned about the major challenge posed by the consumption of
alcohol on the health of women and children particularly with regard to number
of children affected by foetal alcohol syndrome. For the sake of the health of
women and children, we are moving ahead with the efforts to put warning labels
on the containers of alcohol products. These warnings are aimed at raising
public awareness about negative health and social effects of alcohol including
the risk of alcohol consumption during pregnancy.
While we continue to make these interventions as a country, we are convinced
that the health of our population can only be made better if we improve the
socio-economic conditions of Southern African Development Community (SADC) and
the rest of the African continent. Hence, we firmly believe in the
implementation of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) and
critical role of the African Union.
We have to strengthen our health systems and improve access to affordable
health care in the region. We have to ensure that interventions made against
specific health conditions are integrated into the overall healthcare delivery
system and assist in improving the health systems in the region.
I hope you have fruitful deliberations.
Thank you.
Issued by: Department of Health
21 March 2006
