Issued by Department of Health
22 August 2005
The Department of Health would like to announce the process that will be followed in finalising the draft Health Sector Charter following the receipt of a massive amount of inputs from a variety of health stakeholders during the comment period which ended on August 15.
About 50 written submissions were received representing the views of more than 100 organisations in the health sector ranging from labour or professional bodies, civil society to various sections of the private healthcare industry.
Starting from Thursday, August 25, the Task Team established by the Minister of Health to develop the Charter will hold briefing sessions where stakeholders who made written inputs will have an opportunity to make oral presentations.
The Task Team will thereafter consider both written submissions and presentations from all stakeholders and make the necessary amendments to the draft Health Sector Charter to accommodate the issues raised by stakeholders.
We hope that this stage of the consultation process will achieve consensus on most of the issues covered by the Charter and those areas of consensus will be incorporated into the final draft of the Charter.
On areas where there is no consensus, the Task Team will set those issues aside for further engagement amongst stakeholders. Various constituencies within the health sector will be invited to send a specified number of representatives to discuss the outstanding issues.
We are confident that all parties will be able to use this particular stage in our consultation process to gain common ground and the sector will agree on the content of the Charter.
The constructive approach taken by almost every stakeholder to this process is encouraging. The Department of Health is committed to ensure that all stakeholders play a meaningful role in the development of the Health Sector Charter and that their views are considered in the finalisation of this document.
Contact : Sibani Mngadi @ 0827720161