Health For All Case Study

‘Health For All’, as proposed by the WHO, is to an extent feasible within the South African context through Primary Health Care (PHC) and National Health Insurance (NHI) . In 1978 the World Health Organization dedicated themselves and global governments to ‘the main social target’ (World Health Organization [WHO], 1998) of a level of health that would allow for the capability for everyone to work productively and participate actively within their communities by the year 2000 (WHO, 1998). Today, governments are aiming to achieve this goal through various programs. Within South Africa, the government has proposed PHC and NHI to ensure that ‘Health For All’ (HFA) is available to all South Africans, in a bid to close the stark contrast between

It is ‘an approach to health care that promotes the attainment by all people of a level of health that will permit them to live a socially and economically productive life.’ (Alperstein & Irlam, 2005: 5). A fundamental aspect of the PHC is comprehensive care which aims ‘to promote health, prevent disease, and rehabilitation’ of a patient (Alperstein, 2009: 16). The PHC is based on six principles: equal access and equity; participation of all; involvement of all sectors; health promotion and disease prevention; affordable, acceptable and appropriate care and multi-professional teams. All this is done through the levels of care being Family/Community, Primary, Secondary and Tertiary. This model aims to improve the health and welfare of all South Africans. However, with any concept, there are pros and cons to its effectiveness.

The PHC is a comprehensive model that aims to be holistic and provide an all-inclusive care. However, in being so comprehensive and with such a high volume of people, the standard of care and final goal is very unattainable. For example, during our district facilities visits, I witnessed that many patients were unable to be treated or attended to due the high number of patients per day. Because of this, many people are unable to have their health needs attended to which, delays the attainment of Health

For example if GSH were to become an accredited NHI facility, the patient volume would increase exponentially. As I saw in my visit to GSH, they already see to many patients that often have to come back multiple times before they are seen to. Therefore if the NHI were to extend to GSH, the facility would be unable to cater for all the patients. This would then require more health workers, equipment and space, which would need capital in order to be fully functional.

In doing this task, I have reflected on the feasibility of the NHI and the PHC in order to establish Health for All. In theory, both the PHC and the NHI would improve the health services for the majority of the country that are unable to afford a higher standard of health care. This would begin to close the gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘haves not’ which would drastically improve the standard of life of many South African however, in practice, both plans are difficult to achieve.

The main driving force for ensuring that both plans are functioning optimally is capital, in order to improve, create and provide. Without the help of capital, both concepts will be insufficient in achieving