Two NHI projects take root in district
"People still choose to rely on this type of treatment, and we decided to partner with traditional healers to ensure their treatments would not be detrimental to patients, and that they would refer patients to hospitals in cases where they could not treat them," said Dr Dhlomo.
The KwaZulu-Natal MEC for Health, Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo payed a visit to the district on Tuesday to discuss the movements forward of the National Health Insurance (NHI) programme.
Dr Dhlomo launched two NHI projects during his visit.
The first was the partnership between traditional healers and the Department of Health (DoH).
“Before the end of Apartheid we looked at some of the major aspects we wanted to change about the country, one of them happened to be healthcare,” explained Dr Dholmo.
The key area the DoH decided to tackle was service delivery in rural areas. Studies showed people in these areas relied mostly on traditional healers due to the lack of access to proper healthcare.
“People still choose to rely on this type of treatment, and we decided to partner with traditional healers to ensure their treatments would not be detrimental to patients, and that they would refer patients to hospitals in cases where they could not treat them,” said Dr Dhlomo.
The process to make all of this possible included the creation of traditional healer associations, and the weeding out of fake traditional healers. Thus a partnership was born between the remaining healers and the DoH, with 252 healers graduating as healers registered with the DoH.
“We want to make sure that people using traditional healers, are afforded with proper primary healthcare,” concluded Dr Dhlomo.
The second project, which was launched, was the Amajuba Mobile Hospital.
Look out for the next week’s Newcastle Advertiser for more details regarding this project.
