Page 116 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 8

Christian Psychology alive
and the poor condition of public healthcare in
general. Since 2007 the government has been
much franker in acknowledging shortcomings
in both policy and delivery and has promised
to tackle them with determination‘ (2011:3).
This situation should be of grave concern to
practical theologians, FBOs and FBCs and its
members. It is simultaneously a warning and a
clarion call to action.
2. The South African healthcare situation
The public health sector is institutionally frag-
mented and characterized by the poor standard
of infrastructure, skills shortages, poor staff at-
titudes, low levels of patient satisfaction, incom- A World Health Organisation report published
petent management, continuing human resour-
ces and financial crises, with starkly different
health outcomes for different socio-economic
groups. The Department of Health’s Strategic
Plan for 2010-2013 and 10 Point Plan for 2009-
14 (n.d.) has been developed to address these
challenges. In its August 2011 Green Paper on
National Health Insurance the government set
the ambitious goal of achieving universal ac-
cess to quality healthcare over the next 14 years.
Unfortunately there are also significant levels of
incomprehension and mistrust between various
role players, often as a result of ideological dif-
ferences and resentment over the disparity in
resource levels.
The CDE report further highlights the comple-
xities of the South African Health sector: ‚The
coexistence between a failing public health sec-
tor and a private sector that serves a significant
minority with high quality healthcare is the
most contentious aspect of the health reform
debate in South Africa. There is a widespread
tendency in this debate to dismiss the contribu-
tion of the private sector to overall health out-
comes, to be suspicious of the motives of private
health sector players and to challenge the very
legitimacy of private health provision‘ (CDE,
2011:15).
It should be emphasized that here are also many
dedicated people working under exceptionally
difficult conditions in public health services.
Some notable successes have also been achie-
115
ved. This should be recognised, along with the
failings of the public system. The CDE report
(2011:50) also highlights the successful ele-
ments of existing public–private partnerships
Private service providers deliver care of consi-
stently high quality to far more people than is
usually acknowledged. The fact that it is private,
and that some parts of it operate for profit, does
not detract from this. The country should play
to its strengths and turn a deteriorating situati-
on through a collaborative national approach.
The National Planning Commission has identi-
fied healthcare as one of 10 key strategic areas in
the National Development Plan (n.d.).
in 1998 recognised that:
‚Until recently the health professions have lar-
gely followed a medical model, which seeks to
treat patients by focusing on medicines and
surgery, and gives less importance to beliefs
and to faith – in healing, in the physician and
in the doctor–patient relationship. This re-
ductionism or mechanistic view of patients as
being only a material body is no longer satisf-
actory. Patients and physicians have begun
to realise the value of elements such as faith,
hope and compassion in the healing process.
The value of such ‘spiritual’ elements in health
and quality of life has led to research in this
field in an attempt to move towards a more
holistic view of health that includes a non-
material dimension (emphasising the seam-
less connections between mind and body) ‚.
In the same year the Duke University’s Centre
for Spirituality, Theology and Health (CSTH)
was founded. The mission of the CSTH is to
‘conduct research on the relationships between
religion, spirituality, and health, train others to
do so, interpret the research for clinical and so-
cietal applications, explore the meaning of the
research findings within the context of theolo-
gical positions, and discuss how those theologi-
cal positions might inform the design of future
research’ (CSTH, n.d.). As part of the work of
the Centre Koenig, McCullough & Larson pu-
blished the Handbook of Religion and Health in
2001. Their research covers the whole of medi-
cine and is based on 1200 research studies and
400 reviews. The second edition of the Hand-