Date: 01/06/2010
Source: The Democratic Alliance
Title: DA: Waters: Speech by Democratic Alliance shadow minister of health, on International Children's Day, National Assembly

Honourable Speaker

As we celebrate International Children's Day, it gives us an opportunity as a nation, to assess how we are firstly prioritising the needs of our children and secondly how we rise to the challenges facing them.

You can always measure a nation's worth by the way it treats and responds to its children's needs.

If I told you there is country, where nearly one out of every 10 children would die before their fifth birthday, you would find it as horrific and completely unacceptable as I do.
That is a sickening 138 children dying per day.

How many peace time countries can claim that 20 000 babies (55 per day) are still born every year? And that a further 22 000 (60 per day) die before they reach their first birthday?

And that a further 33 000 (23 per day) die before turning five years old? You would be forgiven if you thought I was reading war time statistics, unfortunately honourable members I am not, these are our very own statistics and our very own children.

We are not at war with a foreign country we are at war with our own children.
It is totally unacceptable to put it mildly, that a country with the available resources we have, fails year after year to reduce the infant and child mortality rates.

Under-five mortality rate (U5MR) in South Africa by province (per 1000 live births)

Eastern Cape 105
Free State 99
Gauteng 75
KwaZulu-Natal 116
Limpopo 81
Mpumalanga 100
Northern Cape 68
North West 89
Western Cape 46
South Africa 95

The statistics are reason enough for us to hang our heads in shame. We are about to host the most successful football tournament the world has ever seen, yet we cannot reduce the number of children dying unnecessarily?

South Africa signed up to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals and goal number four is to reduce child mortality rate by two thirds by 2015.

Some countries that had similar mortality rates to us in 1990, such as Brazil, Mexico, and Egypt, are on track to meet this goal and have halved their under five mortality rate since 1990, according to a recent UNICEF report. Conversely, South Africa is among a handful of countries - 12 in fact - where the child mortality rate has actually increased since 1990, and South Africa must now achieve an average annual rate of reduction of 14% in order to meet MDG4 by 2015.

One of the major killers of children under 5 is HIV/AIDS, which if we are all honest with each other, is largely due to the ANC government's decade of denialism and flirtation with quack doctors.

The blame for the rising number of deaths of babies lies with our inadequate health system. If a pregnant mother cannot go to a clinic and expect a nurse to attend to her immediately, and to have her quickly transferred to a hospital if she needs it, then our health system is not working. Children in a predominantly rural province, such as the Eastern Cape, have much higher rates of not having any skilled attendant during birth.


The DA is determined to reverse this trend in provinces where we govern. We will firstly focus on making our hospitals work efficiently.

A report presented at the fourth South African HIV/Aids Conference in Durban revealed that between 50 and 60% of national health department employees are political appointments who have no management training.

The DA will ensure that every person in the health system is appointed on the basis of their skills and experience, not their connections, and that they have formal contracts and performance requirements.

Secondly we will find more doctors and nurses, so that all our hospitals can be properly staffed. We cannot allow the situation where mothers that need immediate medical attention are not afforded it and die due to the failed polices of closing nursing colleges down without thinking through the consequences.

The number of doctors graduating from university medical schools has not increased in more than a decade. We will allow private medical schools to be established so that we can train more doctors, and we will remove the barriers that stop doctors and nurses who have trained in other countries from working here.

Another step which has had great success particularly in the Western Cape is the implementation of Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission. Research has indicated that currently infant mortality in the Western Cape is approaching levels seen before the advent of the HIV-epidemic. This has been achieved through the provision of two anti-retroviral drugs to the mother and baby during pregnancy and at delivery of the baby. The current levels of transmission in the Western Cape are at around 4% which is the lowest in the country, and is expected to decrease further with triple antiretroviral therapy interventions.

Mr Speaker the Democratic Alliance is determined to reduce the infant and child mortality rate - we see it as a gender issue, as a human right issue.

In 2010 we should been celebrating our achievements in reducing child deaths, not mourning the ever increasing baby death that we have recently witnessed - 180 at the Nelson Mandela Academic Hospital in five months.

It is long overdue that child mortality be placed at the top of its agenda.

As Members of Parliament we all should be ashamed that so many of our children are dying unnecessarily.

If we had the political will we could do something about this disgrace.