Question NW551 to the Minister of Health:
17 March 2023 - NW551
Clarke, Ms M to ask the Minister of Health:
Whether he commissioned any studies, investigations and/or evaluations to determine how long it would take to upgrade and/or refurbish the public health sector’s crumbling infrastructure to be ready to implement the National Health Insurance scheme; if not, why not; if so, what are the relevant details of the (a) studies, investigations and evaluations and (b) timelines required to get the crumbling infrastructure ready to implement the National Health Insurance scheme NW604E
Reply:
a) The National Department of Health has conducted few studies focusing on the condition assessments of the health facilities in line with the requirements of the Government Immovable Asset Management Act. The studies also covered few recommendations. Firstly, the study recommended that a certain portion of the capital budget for be hospitals must be set aside for the routine maintenance. Secondly, the study recommended that a certain portion of the capital budget for the hospitals should be set aside for the urgent redress of the major (and often dangerous) poor conditions of the identified hospitals. Thirdly, the study recommended that a certain portion of the capital budget should be set aside for the new infrastructure for the Primary Health Care; Level 1; Level 2 and Level 3 capacity and infrastructure for specialities.
b) Based on the recommendations mentioned above, a ten-year infrastructure plan of the health facilities for 2015 – 2025 was developed and signed off at the beginning of 2015 by the National Department of Health. The ten-year infrastructure plan covers the following areas:
- priority sites that requires the access improvement;
- condition of existing infrastructure;
- illustrate relative capital (replacement) value;
- maintenance estimate;
- refurbishment estimate;
- technology value estimate; and
- timelines for the maintenance activities and refurbishment work.
The total budget implication over ten years was estimated to be in the order of R31bn. The breakdown of the recommended projects for hospital bed capacity improvement:
- Build Value R23,86bn
- Refurbish Value R2,57bn
- Technology Estimate R4,6bn
- Total R31bn
END.