BizCommunity - 8 Nov 2022
The current and ongoing energy crisis in the country has once again demonstrated the resilience that South Africans have; we are solutions driven - businesses and individuals alike 'make a plan' to ensure that we can effectively function during load shedding. We are a nation that is used to stepping up where we need to create public private partnerships to ensure a sustainable service: private education and security, among others, are all examples of this.
Healthcare is another one. As a country, we have almost nine million members on private healthcare schemes. This equates to about 15% of the population who are not placing a burden on what is already a highly constrained public healthcare system, and not forming part of the backlog in accessing primary healthcare.
Our current percentage of GDP spent on healthcare in South Africa – 9% – is equitable to that of many first world countries, including Australia, Denmark, Finland, Portugal and New Zealand. Our social-economic make-up, market dynamics, and demographics however are not comparable. Our healthcare provision for the vast majority of our country’s citizens is inadequate, with rapidly declining healthcare worker numbers, load shedding, funding and numerous other factors all negatively impacting the system.
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