Fast actions needed on health inquiry recommendations

“The recommendations all follow what we heard at the inquiry, in the time that I was there. And I think they’re genuine, they haven’t changed anything there,” said Mrs Staggs.

“But my concern is that we can’t just keep on reviewing the review, we have to have some action out of it.”

This is in reference to recommendation number six, which states “that on the two-year anniversary of the tabling of this report, ‘Portfolio Committee No. 2 – Health’ undertake an inquiry and report on the progress and developments that have been made to address the matters raised by this inquiry”.

Mrs Staggs was one of the many peo- ple who made submissions to the rural

health inquiry, and now after 21 months, including 15 hearings, the findings and recommendations of the inquiry were made public.

“How many more lives are we going to lose in two years’ time if action isn’t taken?

“Yes we have to have reports on the progress, but I believe two years is far too long. My opinion is we need to have changes, but we have to be really careful with those changes, but why have we had an inquiry where we’ve had everybody contribute to it.

“I was just a community member contributing to it, from what I saw at the hospital, but it’s all the health people have been there, surely they can make some decisions now,” said Mrs Staggs.

“It’s a rural health inquiry, so we should be making changes immediately. It needs to be faster.”