Contribution:
HON. MISIHAIRABWI-MUSHONGA: Thank you very much Mr. Speaker. Like my other colleagues, I would like to thank Hon. Maridadi for raising this motion. I am glad that it is an urgent motion and that it was supported by both sides of the House, which just proves how important it is that we deal with it.
I am going to speak to one or two issues on this particular motion. When we talk about urgency, sometimes it looks like we are just speaking for the sake of speaking. As we talk right now, women that had registered with their medical aid cards and are supposed to go and give birth on the basis of those cards are not going to be able to do so. So we are talking about a majority of this population having a serious problem about this and if somebody does not think this is urgent, I do not know what is going to be urgent.
This is not about the money that is not being transferred but about human lives and what is going to happen. Link this process to the fact that there is no cash and it just becomes a real disaster. We cannot have individuals standing up and making a decision about what is going to happen to human lives and Government is sitting there, watching and doing nothing about it.
The Constitution itself defines that there is right to health and this right to health has to be observed by medical aid societies, doctors and Government itself. I am surprised that we are sitting here as Members of Parliament and there are no Ministers on the front bench. I would have thought that the moment there was this crisis, an urgent Cabinet meeting would have been called to say what is it that we can do about this?
This is not a subject of a few of us who are sitting in this House debating it. It is critical, urgent and something needs to be done. I contribute to a medical aid, just to show you the level we have gotten to as a country – we are saying our economy has gone under deflation – as late as last week, my medical aid agent increased subscriptions by US$20, and this is First Mutual. I said to them does this make sense that at this particular point in time of the economy you are increasing the subscriptions.
This shows you that there is something wrong with our general thinking sometimes in this country. When things are bad, it is as if we are trying to find something that makes it worse. We are already in a very bad situation, how somebody can think that the best thing to do right now is to deny people medical aid I have no idea. As it is, we are faced with the problem of liquidity; we are going to have problems in getting drugs to come into the country. In fact, most pharmacies right now are saying if you have any kind of chronic illness, make sure that you order your medicine for as long as three months or so, so that you have a reserve. That is one problem that is there.
The person who may not be able to get medicine will be stuck and if they were to collapse, they cannot get treatment at hospitals. What exactly are we saying as a nation? I hear my colleagues who are saying we need to get the Minister of Health to come here. However, for me, we need to get at the highest level of Government, somebody who is calling for an urgent Cabinet meeting and looking at how this can be resolved. We cannot have another extra 24 hours coming through. We have road accidents happening and for some reasons, 15 to 16 people are dying at the same time and others are being taken to hospital. Can you imagine that you have a crisis and somebody is being taken to hospital whilst someone stands up there and saying, ‘I cannot treat you because as far as I am concerned, yes you have a medical aid but you cannot be treated.’
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