Rate Service Delivery on your Health

“Our health status is very simply determined by the way in which we live, work and play. The Social Determinants of Health Reportcard, graded by the people of South Africa, will provide a people’s assessment of government’s performance on six areas of service delivery which  which impact on  health namely basic education, electricity, water, sanitation, gender and transport,” said Soul City senior advocacy manager Savera Kalideen.

The initial results, graded by a panel of experts, will be released on Human Rights Day, 10 December 2014 at a panel discussion hosted by Soul City. The report cards filled in by the public will be collected by Soul City and presented at the opening of Parliament next year.

Among the questions being answered through this process are:

1. What should the government have tackled over the last 20 years?
2. What did government say they were going to do/tackle and how effective have they been in doing so?
3. What are the shortfalls/weaknesses in what the government should have done?
4. What are the shortfalls/weaknesses in what the government said they were going to do/programmes they did implement?
5. The services that government provides are rights that are enshrined in our Constitution and the Bill of Rights. However, while services such as housing, water, sanitation and others are important in and of themselves, they are even more important as enablers of good health.
6. Poor service delivery on services which impact on health means that some people are condemned to ill health because of their living conditions, not because of their lifestyle. While the Department of Health can provide treatment for these health conditions, it will only be addressing a problem created by the lack of service delivery elsewhere.

The real solution is for government to identify, monitor and improve delivery on those services that impact on health outcomes. Otherwise the health inequality between those South Africans that have access to services that ensure good health, and those that do not have those services, will be a gap that grows ever wider, said Kalideen.

Download the linked reportcard before completing and posting to: Soul City Institute for Health & Development Communication, P.O Box 1290, Houghton, 2041, South Africa.