Sangomas want part in NHI scheme
September 7, 2009
By SLINDILE KHANYILE
The National Professional Traditional Healers' Association would like to participate in the proposed National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme, and it hoped the mooted Traditional Healers' Council would engage in the NHI talks on its behalf, Sazi Mhlongo, the deputy chairman of the association, said last week.
The NHI seeks to provide universal cover for all citizens in the country. All the service providers with the NHI will have to be accredited.
The establishment of the council, as well as the finalisation of the regulations that will govern the Traditional Health Practitioners Act, which recognises the healers as health professionals, has been delayed.
Attempts to get comment from the Department of Health about what has caused the delay were unsuccessful.
The act was signed by former president Thabo Mbeki and it makes it possible for the traditional healers to issue medical certificates and to claim from medical aid schemes. It prohibits the use of human tissue and advertising of services.
Mhlongo said the Health Department informed the association two weeks ago that there would be a meeting soon to resolve outstanding issues, such as the establishment of the Traditional Healers' Council.
"We feel that it is good for the new minister to familiarise himself with all the issues first and to be properly briefed before finalising anything to avoid making mistakes. At the moment, we are putting together a database for the healers by registering them ward by ward," said Mhlongo.
Mhlongo said the last research showed that there were between 200 000 and 300 000 traditional healers in the country and that 85 percent of the population consulted them.
Olive Shisana, the chairwoman of the ANC NHI task team, was non-committal about how the new system would incorporate traditional healers.
When asked at the Board of Healthcare Funders annual conference last week, Shisana said: "We use evidence-based care."
Nceba Gqaleni, a professor in indigenous health systems at the University of KwaZulu-Natal's department of science and technology national research foundation, said finalising the regulations for traditional healers was not a simple matter.
"The regulations will cater for urban and rural, educated and uneducated," said Gqaleni.
"For example, what will it mean for an old lady who is a healer somewhere in a rural area and is not educated who is not registered? Yet in urban areas, there are many bogus people who will be legal."
Gqaleni said a lot of training would need to be done before traditional healers could become part of the NHI.
|
|
