Your Excellency, the President of the Republic of South Africa and our Head of State and Government, President Zuma,
My Cabinet Colleagues – All Ministers present,
Deputy Ministers,
Premiers of Provinces,
Members of Executive Councils,
Ambassadors,
Executive Mayors,
Senior managers from the three spheres of government,
Representatives of Organised Labour,
Private Sector,
Civil Society, Academia,
State Owned Companies and Statutory Councils,
International guests and dignitaries,
Participants in the Health Phakisa,
Fellow South Africans,
Ladies and gentlemen,

On behalf of the Presidency, it gives me great pleasure to welcome you to this launch of the Health Operation Phakisa, the aim of which is to realise our vision of improving the quality of care provided in our public sector clinics, through the Ideal Clinic initiative.

Operation Phakisa is one of the flagship programmes of the Presidency. It builds on the Big Fast Results methodology used by the Malaysian government.

We have introduced Operation Phakisa as one of our mechanisms to achieve the National Development Plan (NDP) goal of creating a capable and developmental state.

As you will be hearing in more detail, through Operation Phakisa, we are developing detailed delivery plans for achieving national priorities in various sectors starting with the ocean economy and now the transformation of our clinics into ideal facilities. We are putting in place the required monitoring and problem resolution mechanisms to ensure that implementation of the required changes takes place.

The Operation Phakisa planning process is very thorough, open and participative. The participants are encouraged to be innovative with their solutions and to challenge the normal “holy cows”.

Between October and November 2014, the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation and the National Department of Health convened a 6-week laboratory. They were joined in this process by diverse stakeholders from within and outside government.

There are posters on display at this venue today, giving an indication of the plans that are emerging so far from this work, and I’m sure that once you have had a look at the posters you will be as excited as I am at what this process is producing.

With these few words, I hope I have whet your appetite to hear more detail from the Minister of Health and our President as to how exactly we are applying this detailed planning and monitoring approach to the primary health care sector.

I would now like to invite our host today, the Premier of Gauteng, Mr David Makhura, to come forward to welcome us to his province.