After Economic Freedom Fighters commander-in-chief Julius Malema made controversial comments about Indian people during the party’s 4th anniversary celebrations in Durban on July 29, many have come out condemning him – but by doing so, are we shutting down an important conversation that needs to be had?

Speaking in Durban, Malema told the crowd, “We also want to call upon our fellow Indians here in Natal to respect Africans. They are ill-treating them worse than Afrikaners will do. We don’t want that to continue here in Natal. This is not anti-Indian statement, it is the truth.” While condemnation has come from all sides, from political parties to convicted fraudsters, the EFF has since said that they will not apologise for the CIC’s comments…more

The Council for Medical Schemes will now entertain complaints about insurance policies that provide cover for primary healthcare services, a medical scheme conference heard this week.

More than 200,000 people, including many members of bargaining councils, use these policies as they are unable to afford the protection of medical scheme membership.

These policies and those that provide payouts covering actual hospital expenses can no longer be offered as insurance policies, following the release of regulations under legislation governing long- and short-term insurance. These clarify what is regarded as the business of medical scheme and what medical expenses insurers can cover…..more

Members will find their medical schemes radically transformed over the next few years as benefits and benefit options are aligned with the National Health Insurance policy, speakers at a Board of Healthcare Funders conference said this week.

In addition, the Council for Medical Schemes will start consulting on the introduction of mandatory membership of medical schemes for those who can afford it, as an interim measure on the path to NHI, Vishal Brijlal, a technical adviser on NHI in the Department of Health, told delegates.

Mandatory membership could bring about significant reductions in contributions as schemes will no longer face the cost of anti-selection – admitting members who join schemes only when they are ill and in need of treatment…..more

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) this week released its 2017 economic survey on South Africa, which includes data comparing us with other emerging markets.

It found that slow growth — which is likely to continue — and high unemployment will weigh on social progress and cohesion.

Growth has disappointed in the past few years. Weak consumer demand, persistently falling business investment, policy uncertainty and the prolonged drought weighed on activity…..more

Although power production has improved, important bottlenecks remain in infrastructure and costs of services, which increase the cost of inputs for firms.

A strike by the National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS) is expected to stretch into its second week as the service pleads poverty. The NHLS operates about 300 laboratories nationwide that conduct tests — from cervical screenings to testing babies for HIV — for the public health sector.

How far the strike has affected these essential services remained unclear on Thursday, but Democratic Alliance Gauteng MEC and health spokesperson Jack Bloom said the majority of NHLS labs in Gauteng have been crippled or shuttered by the strike. ….more

Countries with established national healthcare systems advise the South Africangovernment to partner with the private sector to ensure that the National Health Insurance (NHI) plan is successful, City Press reports from the Board of Healthcare Fundersconference.

Representatives from these countries say that the only way to silence resistance while ensuring that every citizen has access to quality healthcare is to forge a healthy joint venture with the private sector.

The report says government is gearing up for the second phase of the NHI’s finance system, which was launched six years ago. This is part of its objective to abolish the country’s two-tier health system by pooling funds to enable it to provide quality healthcare services to all South Africans based on need, and irrespective of income. ….more

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Sweeping changes to medical schemes on the road to National Health Insurance came a step closer this week when the medical scheme regulator announced the potential closure of small schemes, the rationalisation of scheme options and an accelerated alignment of scheme benefits with the government’s health policy.

At the Board of Healthcare Funders conference in Cape Town this week, a senior Department of Health official also announced that the Council for Medical Schemes would start consulting on how to make scheme membership mandatory for all who can afford it.

The conference heard that the council was considering dissolving 29 medical schemes that have fewer than 6,000 members to better cross-subsidise risk….more

Retail mall owners may be scurrying around in the hunt for new anchor tenants as legacy businesses fall behind changing retail trends.

The 10- to 25-year leases that are usually given to anchor tenants when property developers establish a new mall form part of a model that is quickly becoming obsolete, and this may mean changing the face of the traditional anchor tenant.

Elaine Wilson, the divisional director for research at Broll Property Group, said although grocery and department stores were expected to remain anchor tenants, “certain tenants such as H&M will become more of a necessity for your larger centres”.

Wilson said anchor tenants would always draw feet to a centre due to their offering and size…..more

Evidence in the leaked Gupta e-mails points to a complex multibillion-rand tax avoidance scheme with family patriarch Atul Gupta at its centre.

Various tax experts said on Thursday that the transactions in the leaked e-mails pointed to evidence of a complex practice known as staggering or revolving loans. The Guptas appear to have used personal and inter-company loans to and from their group companies, many of which are located offshore…..more

A comment in today’s print issue of The Lancet starts:

‘Acute rheumatic fever and its major sequela rheumatic heart disease are conditions of poverty… Both conditions continue to be a major cause of death and suffering in low-income and middle-income countries with an estimated 33 million people living with rheumatic heart disease worldwide and more than 300,000 deaths each year, most among people younger than 30 years. Importantly, acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease can be prevented by improvements in socioeconomic conditions and public health measures, including penicillin for streptococcal sore throat in endemic areas.’

And concludes:

‘The World Heart Federation worked with WHO to create a draft resolution document in 2016. Member states accepted the memorandum in January, 2017, and debated and agreed the resolution text at the 141st WHO Executive Board meeting in June, 2017. The World Heart Federation will now marshal the rheumatic heart disease community to help ensure that member states are politically invested in passing the resolution text at the 71st World Health Assembly in May, 2018…’

CITATION: Eliminating acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease
Magdi Yacoub, Bongani Mayosi, Ahmed ElGuindy, Alain Carpentier, Salim Yusuf
The Lancet, Volume 390, No. 10091, p212–213, 15 July 2017
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)31608-2/fulltext

An earlier paper (Carapetis and Zühlke 2011) notes ‘There have been three surges of activity in RF/RHD research and control over the past half-century.’… ‘the Global Programme on Rheumatic Fever and Rheumatic Heart Disease… was disbanded in 2001… The first decade of the 21st Century saw RF/RHD research and control steadily recede from the global public health agenda.’
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3104531/

The periodicity of global interest, action and political and financial investment in RHD is a feature of other diseases too and presumably has causes (largely political?) and impacts, both positive and negative. Can anyone on HIFA say more about these phenomena?

For more information on RHD and current global advocacy see:
http://rhdaction.org

Best wishes, Neil

On Friday July 14, three Palestinian men killed two Israeli officers stationed at the Haram al-Sharif compound, which includes – aside from the Al-Aqsa Mosque – the famed Dome of the Rock and other Palestinian Muslim sites, revered by Muslims. Mohammed Ahmed Jabareen, 29, Mohammed Hamed Abd Al-Latif Jabareen, 19, and Mohammed Ahmed Mafdal Jabareen, 19, were immediately killed by occupation soldiers.

On the day of the attack, several Palestinians were killed in various parts of the West Bank and a 3-year-old child from Gaza died while awaiting a permit to cross from the besieged region to the West Bank for treatment. None of this registered in international media. The armed Palestinian attack on Israeli soldiers, however, made headlines around the world…..more

The ANC supports the policy proposal put forward by Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi to use money allocated for tax rebates to South Africans on medical aid to fund National Health Insurance (NHI), it confirmed on Monday.

Naledi Pandor, chairwoman of the subcommittee on education, health, science and technology of the ANC national executive committee, made the pronouncement following the governing party’s policy conference last week.

Pandor said that the medical aid tax rebates amounted to about R20bn…..more

Universal healthcare coverage costs under scrutiny

In the past few weeks, two directors-general of government departments have been suspended and the CEO of the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) fired.

The three cases have lots in common. The directors-general, water affairs head Dan Mashitisho and agriculture head Mike Mlengana, had been asked by their  political principals to sign contracts they believed were illegal or unprocedural.

Sassa CEO Thokozani Magwaza has had a long conflict with his principal, Bathabile Dlamini, over her interference in the agency’s work, in particular finalising a contract with a new service provider to conduct the payment of social grants….more

South Africa should rely on the expertise and strengths of its private healthcare system for a successful rollout of its planned national health insurance (NHI) scheme, according to the former head of Ghana’s national health insurance system.

Nathaniel Otoo, former CEO of the Ghanaian National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), addressed delegates at the Board of Healthcare Funders’ national conference in Cape Town, sharing some of Ghana’s challenges with implementation of universal healthcare…..more

As the population, economy and urban built environment in the Gauteng City-Region (GCR) expand, the government is increasingly under pressure to provide urban infrastructure to support growth. It is more and more important that this infrastructure is sustainable to minimise the negative environmental impacts often associated with traditional forms of urban development. Green Infrastructure (GI) can achieve this. GI is the interconnected set of natural and man-made ecological systems, green spaces and other landscape features that provide services and strategic functions in the same way as traditional infrastructure. In harnessing the benefits of ecosystem services, GI is a more efficient, cost effective and sustainable alternative – and sometimes accompanying approach – to conventional forms of infrastructure….more

A comment in today’s print issue of The Lancet starts:

‘Acute rheumatic fever and its major sequela rheumatic heart disease are conditions of poverty… Both conditions continue to be a major cause of death and suffering in low-income and middle-income countries with an estimated 33 million people living with rheumatic heart disease worldwide and more than 300,000 deaths each year, most among people younger than 30 years. Importantly, acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease can be prevented by improvements in socioeconomic conditions and public health measures, including penicillin for streptococcal sore throat in endemic areas.’

And concludes:

‘The World Heart Federation worked with WHO to create a draft resolution document in 2016. Member states accepted the memorandum in January, 2017, and debated and agreed the resolution text at the 141st WHO Executive Board meeting in June, 2017. The World Heart Federation will now marshal the rheumatic heart disease community to help ensure that member states are politically invested in passing the resolution text at the 71st World Health Assembly in May, 2018…’

CITATION: Eliminating acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease
Magdi Yacoub, Bongani Mayosi, Ahmed ElGuindy, Alain Carpentier, Salim Yusuf
The Lancet, Volume 390, No. 10091, p212–213, 15 July 2017
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)31608-2/fulltext

An earlier paper (Carapetis and Zühlke 2011) notes ‘There have been three surges of activity in RF/RHD research and control over the past half-century.’… ‘the Global Programme on Rheumatic Fever and Rheumatic Heart Disease… was disbanded in 2001… The first decade of the 21st Century saw RF/RHD research and control steadily recede from the global public health agenda.’
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3104531/

The periodicity of global interest, action and political and financial investment in RHD is a feature of other diseases too and presumably has causes (largely political?) and impacts, both positive and negative. Can anyone on HIFA say more about these phenomena?

For more information on RHD and current global advocacy see:
http://rhdaction.org

Best wishes, Neil