Issued by: SA Communication Service
26 January 1998
Pretoria - Minister of Health, Dr Nkosazana Zuma, is to visit the Eastern Cape on Tuesday (January 27) to lend support to the launch of a R160-million project by USAID, aimed at creating an efficient, effective and affordable health care system in South Africa.
The launch of the Equity in Primary Health Care Project, will take place at Grey Hospital in King William's Town at 10 am.
The seven year project, designed in close collaboration with the South African government, compliments the government's policy to strengthen the national health system so that essential primary health care services are available and affordable to all citizens.
Phase one of the project - the first four years - will start in the Eastern Cape putting systems in place for the delivery of essential services. The second phase, the last three years, will see the expansion of the project into other provinces.
The focus will be on problems of the historically disadvantaged sectors of society; the rural African women and children in the former homelands. The project will seek to address longstanding health problems of malnutrition, infectious diseases, maternal and peri-natal mortality and the new increasing problem of HIV/Aids - problems resulting from basic human needs such as the lack of water, sanitation, housing, employment and rapid urbanisation.
The success of the project will be seen through its contribution to improved life expectancy and reduced infant and child mortality rates, stabilisation of HIV/Aids prevalence rates and a decrease in TB cases in South Africa.
As part of the launch, USAID will provide 23 vehicles to the Eastern Cape Health Department to allow district health managers to get to hard to reach areas to provide supervision and support to health care workers on the ground.
An institutional contractor selected to oversee the implementation of the project, Management sciences of Health, is a non-profit organisation with 25 years of experience in working with governments worldwide in implementing health and family planning programs.
For more information contact Vincent Hlongwane 082 557 0978