ADDRESS BY PREMEIR THABANG MAKWETLA ON THE OCCASION OF THE EYE CARE
AWARENESS WEEK & WORLD SIGHT DAY
12 October 2004
Programme Director
Honourable MEC for Health & Social Services
Mr William Lubisi
Nkomazi Mayor Councillor Mr Selby Khumalo
Your Majesties Amakhosi
Distinguished guests
Ladies and Gentlemen
Let me from the outset express our gratitude at the privilege of addressing
such an important gathering - a meeting of patriots willing to build on the
foundations of the better life for all we promised our people a decade ago.
When we together threw off the shackles of racism and apartheid ten years ago,
we consciously embraced a South Africa where everyone, regardless of social
standing, gender, race or physical impairment faced the prospect of enjoying the
fruits of our hard-fought freedom. This included the right to basic needs such
as shelter, food, health care, work opportunities, income security and all those
aspects that promote the physical, social and emotional well-being of all people
in our society, with special provision made for those who are unable to provide
for themselves because of specific problems.
Indeed we emphasised that we would introduce a programme to ensure the
prevention, early detection and treatment of specific priority diseases,
including tuberculosis, hypertension, diabetes and loss of sight.
We also promised that we would continue to be in constant contact with our
people in order to increase our understanding of their feelings, desires and
aspirations.
Today we have a caring government that has expanded the programme to provide
social security, housing, electricity, water and health care to the poor; people
with disabilities and other vulnerable groups. Because we have a caring
government hundreds of clinics have been constructed closer to where people
live, providing primary health care and fighting illnesses that prey on the poor
and defenceless in our society.
Today free health care is provided to mothers, children under six years of age
and people with disabilities. Indeed we have made massive progress, but we
acknowledge that the quality of these services needs to be improved and that we
need to create more meaningful employment so that people can use these services
more effectively and in a sustainable manner.
Our biggest challenges, therefore, remain the creation of work and the defeat
of poverty and want. These two core objectives are the major focus of our
programmes for the Second Decade of Freedom. To achieve this we need stronger
partnership among all South Africans, A People's Contract for a Better South
Africa. And we know that working together in a People's Contract to Create Work
and Fight Poverty, we are confident of success.
Ladies and gentlemen, our meeting here today coincides with some frightening
statistics on sightlessness and vision impairment. Those who keep tabs of the
number of people afflicted by this conditions, tell us that in the world today
there are 50 million people who are blind, and that another 200 million are
visually harmed.
In South Africa alone, 240 000 people of an estimate 570 000 visually
impaired people are blind. We are also told that every five seconds one person
in our world goes blind, and every minute a child looses his or her sight. We
are further told that if urgent action is not taken these numbers will double
over the next 20 years. This is unacceptable, both in human and economic terms.
Unacceptable because sightlessness and visual impairment have far-reaching
social, economic and developmental implications, not only for the individual,
but for the families and communities. When visual disability occurs in
childhood, it challenges children's development.
The sighted children may also be needed to escort the blind adults around the
village, town and cities and therefore miss the opportunity of school and
education.
In working age, it lowers productivity. October is productivity month and we
are all ware that improving productivity is crucial not only for the performance
of business and delivery of government services, but for improving the living
standards of the general community. When blindness strikes men and women of
working age have difficulty obtaining any work. There is increasing evidence
that women suffer a disproportionately higher burden of visual disability.
Mothers in particular have problems providing for their families leaving
children to cook, clean and bring up their siblings.
Across the life span - and particularly among the elderly - it devalues the
quality of life. Blindness at times means being an outcast resented and
considered as useless by grumbling children. It can also mean poverty, neglect
and early death. Poverty prevents people from getting treatment for their eye
diseases and the resulting visual loss and blindness lead to greater poverty,
creating a vicious cycle.
That is why it is important for us to actively strengthen our collective
effort to fight poverty. Let us remember that in the main some forms of
blindness or vision impairment are avoidable - either preventable or curable.
For instance, Vitamin A deficiency blinds hundreds of thousands of children per
year, yet it is totally avoidable with three vitamin A capsules per year from
ages one to six.
In order to tackle the avoidable blindness and to avoid further increase in the number of blind and visually impaired people, we must continue to add our voices and direct our energies towards the global initiative known as "VISION 2020 - a global partnership aiming to eliminate avoidable blindness in the next 16 years.
Vision 2020 carries a vision of a future in which all may have a reasonable
expectation to have the right to sight. Vision 2020 is also a message of equity.
Vulnerable groups, such as children, women and the elderly must be given
priority attention.
We must actively strive to meet the rising needs of the blind, the visually
impaired and deaf blind South Africans. We must provide services like
orientation and mobility training and vision rehabilitation. We must also, as
far as we can, provide career development and employment.
Programme Director, there are several causes for blindness, but this week we
are targeting mainly Cataract and refractive errors. Cataract is the main cause
of avoidable blindness in South Africa. From today until the end of next week we
will focus our attention on performing cataract operations at this and other
institutions. We hope that by the end of the coming week more than 500 people
would have benefited from our efforts.
Cataract surgery is today the most common surgical intervention worldwide. It
brings relief to many, but it is also a cause of great public health expenditure
in all countries. In South Africa, like in many regions where avoidable
blindness is a public health problem, we have many competing demands on our
resources for health.
Vision 2020 therefore also aims to helping build national capacity and
eveloping a sustainable comprehensive national eye care system. Ladies and
gentlemen, we have the knowledge and skills to prevent and treat the causes of
avoidable visual impairment such as cataract, trachoma and visual loss in
childhood, through time-tested interventions that are safe, and effective.
But in order to achieve lasting success we need community involvement. The concept of primary health care underscores that it takes more than a disease control campaign to achieve lasting change. The community must be the driving force in achieving health, in terms of awareness, motivation, and support to health care delivery. Communities must be encouraged to participate actively in the planning, managing, delivery, monitoring and evaluation of the health services in their areas.
I am heartened by the fact that amongst us today are individuals and groups from the public and private sector who have given generously of their time and resources in order to give this effort a huge boost. Indeed what we need, and what we must continue to work hard at is to build on the partnership which is the only guarantee to our success.
The global health agenda is too big for any single actor. We need to reach out to form new partnerships. By working together, we can achieve what was previously not possible for individual agencies and governments. This is the best message we can give to demonstrate opportunities for more action in the field of global health.
The gains we made were largely due to the continued partnership with all
sectors of our communities. Let us cement the gains made by our democracy and
celebrate the Ten Years of Freedom by strengthening our families, respecting our
elder and making another person's child my child, particularly during this month
of October. I call upon all South Africans to work together to fight poverty and
to help create a better South Africa and a better world.
In the past ten years we have demonstrated that together we can and shall
continue to make a difference. Together we must continue to "FIGHT FOR SIGHT"
and to defend "THE RIGHT TO SIGHT" because we are a government that has come of
age in a country whose time have come.
I thank you.