Until a woman from the poorest family in the most crowded slum can be sure that her local clinic will have the medicine and staffing her government has promised, global health will remain uncertain
A great read from World Vision’s Policy Report: Grassroots to global: 7 steps to Citizen-Driven Accountability for the Sustainable Development Goals
This is what the SA NCD Alliance supports. Do you?
Step 2 Work Together: Support collaboration among accountability actors, and aggregate citizen-generated information about the quality of service delivery at the subnational level
Thumbs up to the NCDs cluster of the National Department of Health (NDoH) for its responsiveness to stakeholder recommendations. The draft cancer plan, National Plan for the Prevention and Control of Cancer 2015 – 2020 (NCCP) is being reviewed by multisector – all of society stakeholder meeting early next month. Click here to review this draft.
Feedback from stakeholders on the 2014 a draft NCCP made it clear that more consultation was needed. The initial stakeholder meeting to its content (organisational structure) and process of development (planning process) in Pretoria on 6 February 2015.
The aims of the meeting include:
- Identifying priorities in cancer prevention and control;
- Setting goals and objectives;
- Setting strategies for intervention;
- Setting processes and timelines to achieve a final draft.
Professor Melvyn Freeman and the cluster team are to be congratulated on the transparent and inclusive step. The 1999 NCCP needs urgent revision to provide an integrated, comprehensive people-centered plan for South Africa. The new plan must take into account:
- changing demographic and epidemiological trends
- global and national targets
- the health and developmental agendas.
For more information contact Elmie Engelbrecht at [email protected]
Click here to download the revised draft outline for consideration.
Patient- or person-centred care is the next paradigm shift in healthcare systems strengthening and it has the power to change lives. It shows the way to integrated NCDs care.
Understand more about PCCC by watching this series of 4 videos.
The 7 PCCC building blocks were developed by the LIVESTRONG Foundation has published the outcome of a symposium on patient-centred cancer care. It research list 7 key building block that can be utilised to deliver cancer care across a variety of settings.
Click here to download the PCCC report.
Global NCDs Status Report 2014
A World Health Organization report on NCDs prevention and control (2014) that is framed around the nine voluntary global targets. The report provides data on the current situation, identifying bottlenecks as well as opportunities and priority actions for attaining the targets.
The 2010 baseline estimates on NCD mortality and risk factors are provided so that countries can report on progress, starting in 2015. In addition, the report also provides the latest available estimates on NCD mortality (2012) and risk factors, 2010-2012.
All ministries of health need to set national NCD targets and lead the development and implementation of policies and interventions to attain them. There is no single pathway to attain NCD targets that fits all countries, as they are at different points in their progress in the prevention and control of NCDs and at different levels of socioeconomic development. However all countries can benefit from the comprehensive response to attaining the voluntary global targets presented in this report.
Click here to download report
No province meets the all of the criteria for an operational NCDs plan:
- NGOs & PLWNCDs engaged in national NCD plan development
- Provincial budgetary allocation for prevention and treatment
- Intersectoral NCDs mechanism including NGOs, PLWNCDs and private sector
- NCDs plan with a ‘whole of government’ approach, i.e. with areas for action beyond the health sector.
NCDs plans could be standardised if a template existed and that could easily be one of the first tasks of the long delayed NCDs Commission / National Health Commission.
Discouraged NCDs personnel in provinces
Dedicated health officials from the provincial heath head offices work on NCDs despite the low priority given by leaders to fight NCDs. One such worker recently said: “I have been told there is no budget for NCDs health promotion in our province for the rest of the financial year. What am I supposed to do for the next 5 months? It is very discouraging.”
Table 1: NCDs plans available and operational in provinces
| Eastern Cape: Unknown |
No web-based documentation found and no response to request for NCDs plan. |
| Free State Unknown |
No web-based documentation found and no response to request for NCDs plan. |
| Gauteng: Partial |
Completed draft NCDs operational plan that is combined with geriatrics and eye care. (26) Goals, targeted and with budget request. Intersectoral objectives with meetings and district coordinators already take place. Availability of plan not known. |
| KwaZulu-Natal Partial |
Completed draft NCDs plan used to guide activities which presented at the intersectoral KZN–SA NCD Alliance Indaba (workshop) in June 2014.(27). However, support is implied by the attendance of the Member of the Executive Committee (MEC) for Health at the NCDs meeting. (28) |
| Limpopo: unknown |
No web-based documentation found and no response to request for NCDs plan. |
| Mpumalanga partial |
Completed draft NCDs Operational Plan 2014 (29) |
| North West unknown |
No web-based documentation found and no response to request for NCDs plan. |
| Northern Cape unknown |
No web-based documentation found and no response to request for NCDs plan. |
| Western Cape partial |
Plan under construction. (30) |
Source: SA NCD Alliance Benchmarking NCDs for action 2015. Full list of references in benchmarking document (all are all provincial government documents.)
Only 3 provinces have draft (not officially approved) NCDs plans and none have a budgetary allocation that can be traced to NCDs. Assessing the extent of NCDs roll out is difficult as neither budgets nor monitoring mechanisms are available. The three provinces are Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga (see Table 1).