The Deputy Minister of Health Dr Molefi Sefularo this evening launched the Centre for Rural Health, a project of the Witwatersrand Faculty of Health Sciences, and hoped that it would develop into a true national asset.
It coincided with another launch of its Advocacy Project, to work with the Centre, in cooperation with the Rural Doctors Association of Southern Africa (RuDASA) and AIDS Law Project. The Advocacy Project will develop an advocacy framework and a structure to drive its approach.
The vision of the centre is to become a leading academic body in the field of human resources for rural health, operating through centres based within health districts and concentrating primarily on rural areas in the North West, Limpopo and Mpumalanga.
"We appreciate the launch of the Centre, particularly because it supports the recruitment and retention of personnel for rural health services. There are huge inequities in the human resource availability between the private and public sectors, as well as between urban and rural areas in South Africa," said the Deputy Minister.
Dr Sefularo said that many health programmes had consistently been experiencing shortages of suitable health personnel, and that had often been one of the major constraints attributed to programmes that were not accomplishing their intended objectives.
"To overcome the challenges in rural areas and to ensure equitable distribution of resources, we need to focus on improving integrated service delivery through better co-ordination of planning and resource deployment, and realise the constitutional right of the rural poor to health care services," added Dr Sefularo.
Director for the Centre for Rural Health, Professor Ian Couper, concurred with the Deputy Minister, and said that the country needed a coordinated long-term approach if it were to succeed in its mission of producing the rural workforce in South Africa.
"I believe the university cannot ignore the needs of the country, but instead has a mandated duty as a public institution to train health professionals for its needs. The needs of the health care system are our responsibility to address and not that of the government alone. We have demonstrated as a university that we are up to the challenge of producing a home grown rural health workforce," said Professor Couper.
The problem of a lack of adequate health workforce in rural areas, said Professor Tom Norris, Vice Dean for Academic Affairs in the University of Washington during his presentation, was not unique to South Africa. "WWAMI region, in much of the US, in South Africa, and in much of the world is in serious trouble. If it were an agricultural crop, it would be turning brown, drying up and dying. Twenty percent of Americans live in rural areas, which are over 50 million people, with only nine percent physicians practicing in rural areas."
Professor Norris's recommendation for South Africa is: "it may take a village to raise a child, but it clearly also takes a system to create and sustain a rural physician. A continuum of coordinated or integrated programmes works the best."
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Issued by: Department of Health
14 August 2009
Source: Department of Health (http://www.doh.gov.za)
