News

In December 2009, CREHS (Consortium for Research on Equitable Health Systems) researchers in South Africa participated in the 5th Public Health Association of South Africa (PHASA) conference. CREHS was represented by the Centre for Health Policy and the Health Economics Unit. The conference theme was: Millennium Development Goals: Measuring progress in public health in South Africa.

CREHS researchers addressed 300 delegates including health professionals and academics from 17 countries. PHASA, which is chaired by the CHP’s Professor Laetitia Rispel succeeded in attracting a large contingent from the African continent.

The presentations covered work from all four CREHS research objectives on health sector reform, financial risk protection, health workforce performance and scaling-up. Also, there were presentations from the CREHS-related project, Strategies for Health Insurance for Equity in Less Developed Countries (SHIELD).

The conference presentations were given amidst major health policy announcements aimed at improving health care for South Africa’s most vulnerable populations.

On World Aids Day, the government announced plans to scale up life-prolonging anti-retroviral drugs to greater numbers of people with HIV/AIDS. Professor Rispel and Bulelwa Ngoma from the CHP participated in newspaper and television media activities thereby informing the larger public on discussions at PHASA.

The PHASA conference also provided researchers with an opportunity to share preliminary estimates on the cost of rolling out national health insurance for all, undertaken by the Health Economics Unit. These are particularly timely, following the first meeting of the Ministerial task team on national health insurance in South Africa, and at a time when the issue is being widely debated in the media.

A new CREHS policy brief that explores the affordability of equitable access to ART in South Africa by and beyond 2020, within the context of the proposed National Health Insurance system, is now available.

Extract from the latest CREHS newsletter.