The panellists included Peter van de Ven, VP and GM Philips Healthcare Africa; Jelco van der Avoort, manager KPMG Healthcare advisory; Dr Flavia Senkubuge, VP African Federation of Public Health Associations (AFPHA); Alex van den Heever, chair social security at Wits University and Dr Adedayo Osholowu, chief representative officer Florence Nightingale Group.
Loring opened the floor on the current healthcare burden on the continent, stating that low-income countries life expectancy rates are 23 years lower than high-income countries.
"Research has shown that 25% of the global healthcare burden sits on the African continent, which only spends 1% on healthcare and only has 3% of the healthcare workforce. This paints the picture of what government is faced with," says van der Avoort.
Van de Ven added that much money goes to Africa currently, specifically AIDS related money as the focus is still on communicable diseases. "The non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, heart-failure, cancer etc are coming up more often and the infrastructure is not geared to take on these challenges. I believe that this will be one of the major issues that Africa will face in the near future next to the enormous challenge in mother and childcare, maternal mortality and child mortality. We believe that a shift to shed light on non-communicable diseases is required to face the challenges of today and the future."
Dr Senkubuge said that it is intriguing to note that in other African countries you would hear talk about a quadruple burden of disease, poverty related diseases, violence and injury. "In as much as we are talking about non-communicable diseases, at the back of our minds we have to face that we need an infrastructure in place to deal with violence and injury among the African population."
When asked what were the biggest issues in terms of governments' capabilities to roll out what is needed, van den Heever said that there are many similarities between the experiences of South Africa and the rest of Africa. "Part of the problem that we are seeing isn't just the burden of disease but it's the way in which the public systems are willing to cope efficiently with dealing with the problem. Africa is expanding and it should be performing better. The key issue is the efficiency of the performance of the public system of a number of countries, including South Africa, which is spending at or beyond what it should in the public sector and yet is performing worse than many countries are."
