Date: 30/10/2003
Source: Department of Health
Title: Tshabalala-Msimang: Gala dinner for community health workers


SPEECH BY THE MINISTER OF HEALTH, DR MANTO TSHABALALA-MSIMANG, AT GALA DINNER FOR COMMUNITY HEALTH WORKERS, 30 October 2003

Programme Director,
His Excellency,
Ambassador Lake,
MECs, ladies and gentlemen - good evening!

You may be wondering why I am making another speech today, having opened the workshop this morning. Let me explain, this morning I was merely setting the scene and highlighting where we come from with the community health worker programme and why we drafted the framework. I pointed out what else government was doing with respect to the extended public works programme and the community development worker programme. The Department of Public Works shared with us some of the thinking on the extended public works programme and I am informed that tomorrow morning we will have a presentation on community development workers.

Tonight, however, I wish to say a few words that I hope will affirm the role that community health workers have played - which role I hope they will continue to play in the future.

I am very happy with the participation of community health workers at this workshop - you are here to tell us first hand about your experiences. I have a long history of association with you - in exile I worked closely with community health workers and when I returned I continued with this work at home, first in Cape Town and then in NPPHCN in Durban where I was national co-ordinator of training and convened in this capacity the first ever community health worker workshop.

So in a sense this has and continues to be my passion.

One of the things we started in NPPHCN with the assistance of AMREF was to develop a national core curriculum for community health workers. Part of this process was to train our people in curriculum development. We also convinced AMREF to work with the University of Western Cape's public health programme to train primary health care facilitators with an emphasis on community based health care - things have indeed come a full circle.

I want to share with you a short story about meeting a group of community health workers in February this year. I was invited to meet, at short notice by Elise a group of community health workers in Cape Town. They told me of their passion to assist their communities and I witnessed their dedication first hand even in the face of impending retrenchment given that funding for this programme was about to end and they had no way of sustaining themselves. It is therefore absolutely critical that we are able to ensure that this programme not only gets extended but that we also put mechanism in place to ensure that they are sustained.

Besides finding money to sustain this programme we need to ensure that we put in place mechanism to train and support the community health workers. You know as the first face of the public health system in the community they need to be empowered so that they in turn can empower communities. We need to show them respect so that this can be translated to respect from and for communities.

We have said time and again, in fact we reaffirmed this at the recent conference to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Alma Ata, that community ownership, accountability and local action are key pillars of the primary health care approach. In designing and implementing an efficient community health worker programme I have no doubt that we will simultaneously be strengthening participation of communities in their own health.

Phambili uNompilo phambili

Source: Department of Health (http://www.doh.gov.za)