By Johannah Thakadu

The role that provinces and municipalities can play in improving health care was the focus of a recent conference held by the Department of Health.

The two-day conference examined the progress made by the department over the past nine years as well as ways to increase community participation in the primary health sector.

Ayanda Ntsaluba, the department's director general, told the conference yesterday that more work had to be done to train nurses to allow them to appropriately deal with situations.

Working conditions for nurses would have to be improved to stop experienced nurses leaving the public sector for the private health sector or for jobs overseas, he said.

In the past nine years, Ntsaluba said, the government had built 701 clinics to improve health services to more than 7-million people in under-serviced areas.

Primary health services had also been extended to a lot more people in South Africa. Ntsaluba, however, said that further investment was necessary to extend resources in rural areas.

To date, the government had been providing free health services to those who needed it, Ntsaluba told the conference, which opened in Benoni in Gauteng yesterday. In 1994, the government announced that pregnant and lactating women and children under the age of six would have free access to health care. This year, the Department of Health extended free health services to people living with disabilities.

Ntsaluba said investment in better facilities and upgrading of the appearance of health structures would be looked into as they also added to better treatment of patients.

He said there was an obligation for government to give regular updates to communities about health services so that they would be able to assist where they could and know where to go for certain treatments.

Selinah Maphorogo, a public health care representative from Limpopo, said volunteers from her community were taught and trained on how to notice and identify the symptoms of Trachoma, which was a major problem in the province.

Trachoma is an easily spread eye infection which can pass from one family member to the other and it affects mostly poor people in rural areas.

House-to-house treatment was being administered in Maphorogo's community, which had been told of the importance of keeping surroundings clean to prevent the spread of the disease.

Rubbish pits have also been established to reduce flies, which also spread the disease. People have also been taught how to keep their wounds clean to avoid complications.

Campaigns to raise awareness about malaria prevention had been launched, Maphorogo said. Information included details on how to take care of those who fall ill from malaria.

"Sharing responsibilities as a community to take care of sicknesses does help in reducing illnesses," said Maphorogo.

The conference ends today.
- BuaNews

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