Health is all that matters

The majority, if not all, countries were caught unprepared by the Covid-19 pandemic. No-one in the world seemed to have put funds aside for rainy days – despite the United Nations Millennium Development Goals requiring increased spending on health, especially by poor nations.

South Africa is guilty as charged here.

Instead of increasing the health budget, spending had been dropping over the years. You then wonder how will they achieve the ANC’s own vision contained in the National Development Plan (NDP)?

The NDP 2030 came with high-level targets for the health sector, including raising life expectancy to at least 70 years, ensuring that the generation of under-20s is largely free of HIV, achieving an infant mortality rate of less than 20 deaths per 1,000 live births, and an under-5 mortality rate of less than 30 per 1,000.

The NDP, by all accounts, is hailed as the best blueprint, compared to its predecessors. But the ANC government preferred to let it gather dust or not follow its prescripts.

Decreasing the health budget undermines even the ambitious National Health Insurance, which would require massive spending. At the current meagre level, there is doubt even the NHI would be easily operationalised.

If we were a developed nation and not coming from apartheid rule where the black majority was deliberately given inferior education, I would say health is even more important than education, which traditionally get a lion’s share of budget.

But for a nation where a large number of adults were deprived of education, it would be unjustified to relegate it.

Now, with a pandemic like this, we are in a Catch-22 situation. Covid-19 will leave us with several lessons. The spending patterns will have to change, with health spending either equal to or slightly above that of education.

South Africa has its priorities wrong. Instead of raising social services spending, the government increased social security grants, the funding of state-owned enterprises and other areas that will bring them votes.

Our social security grants system is corrupted – with illegal or fake beneficiaries and theft of funds by some government officials who rob the system. Not to mention foreign beneficiaries who are touted and bribe their way into the grant system.

Budgeting for a pandemic is what world leaders would be forced to do in a post-Covid-19 world. Instead of accumulating weapons and wanting to be a military superpower, the United States and other countries would be forced to look at health issues.

The increasing death toll in the US and other Western nations would force a rethink in the world’s capitals.

It is particularly important that Italy, Spain and Britain – where Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Prince Charles have contracted the disease – and the rest of Eurozone push for improved health budgeting.

As much as we are not out of the woods yet as a country, the situation in Italy is sad. You pity them more than you pity your own country.

That Rome had to call for help from Cuba, a tiny island nation, shows desperation.

We need a complete rethink and put health as a top priority – not only in South Africa but also the rest of the world.

Eric Naki

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