Speech by Sipho Mthathi Introducing Her Slide-show Presentation at People's Health Summit 

Yesterday we observed what has to be the beginning of a process that will lead to a much improved health system for all. The Summit for a Peopleís Health Service. 
 
We heard stories of people who use the public health service. They were mostly positive stories, of people who are alive today, through the efforts of health workers and organizations which have shown leadership when it was most needed in our country, MSF, TAC, support groups with no names but who have given and kept hope where leaders like our President did everything to take it away. 

No one of us here needs to be taught about the health system because we live it. We live the life of waiting in endless queues for a health service that is often worse than inadequate. We know how we wait in queues only to receive a panado, or be told ìthere are no medicines here, we have to close at 10 in the morning because if we take on more people the 2 nurses will have to stay here till late because we have very little staff, the doctor only comes once a week so come back next week, the HIV clinic is only open twice a week, we ordered the medicines a month ago, the delivery van never got here so we have to wait six weeks for  it to be our delivery cycle again, we have no Clerk/ there is only one pharmacist for this district, the medicines expired in the depot, we have not been trained to manage patients living with HIV, we cannot speak because we are afraid to loose our jobs, things are decided by those who have power and we never get asked so what do you think should be done, because you work in this system, each day of your life.

We know these words and we know their result.  We watch our own health deteriorate. We die unnecessarily, our right to health care has become meaningless. 
In a debate on 10 years of democracy our President restated his vision for how we should handle struggle in this new era. He reinforced his visions of struggle in an article he wrote for the Financial Mail, called the ìWeight of historyî. 

He says ìthose who tell the story of the past must learn to assimilate its spirit and speak in its languageî. He goes on to question ìsubjective evidence of the failures of this government, which often takes the form of sensationalized anecdotal storiesî. 

In a workshop I did with Mpumalanga and Limpopo comrades a few weeks ago, Comrade Isiah told the story of his life, a story of having to carry the burden of the failures of our health system. Comrade Sipho, there is this thing that bothers me a lot, there is this family that keeps bringing their sick child and asks me to do something for them. The mother of the child died of AIDS so an aunt is taking care of him. The child has AIDS. He is so thin, he has thrush and is completely wasted.
We went to the hospital and each time the child is discharged and they say nothing can be done for him. I ask if they canít give him fluconazole or something. But this story haunts me. I really feel helpless. I feel like Iíve failed the child and the family. Sometimes I wonder what it means to be an activist if I canít even help people.
 
Now is this story only that of Isiah. Is this story the story of that sick child alone.
Is this story too anecdotal and therefore does not represent the experience of the vast majority of our people?
The president might say so. 

Currently I am battling with a sister living with HIV who drinks, smokes, doesnít eat, lives without care.  Before HIV she was a lady, confident, self sufficient,  very cheeky. 

So when I got this call, while doing this workshop where Comrade Isiah made us all cry and was told that she was getting worse and yet behaving so badly I called and shouted at her. How could you, with all the education, all the support and an AIDS activist in your family, access to better things than most people. All you have to do is bloody ask. You are being impossible and so irresponsible. I am fed up with you I canít deal with it any more. Everyone is trying to help you and all you do is discourage people. I said other more hurtful things too. I put down the phone and went back to the workshop.

A few minutes she called and cried for a long time. I stopped going to the support groups because 
ìI got tired of seeing sick people, listening to problems that sound like they can never be solved, I got tired of shoving panado and vitamin down my throat, eating food and still my body is disappearing  in front of my eyes and I lose hope. Many people I was in a support group with have died. She went on and on but the point she was making is that the health system has failed many people, families.
People with AIDS bear the biggest burdenî. 

This knowledge alone creates a vicious cycle of ill health, where loss of hope sometimes make people incapable of taking responsibility for their own health. So while I could blame my sister for being careless because she has a choice, it is not always as simple as that and these are the reasons we must fight for a better health care system.

These are the reasons we must tell our stories until parliament says ìStop we have heard you nowî and act on our demands. We must use our stories as a weapon to show why change must happen. And we must combine that with reading and understanding facts, statistics to arm ourselves for a struggle that will be more complicated than the ones we have fought before, because there is much vested interest from private sector and others, we will have to fight with those we love because they have supported our struggles before. 

I was asked to talk about the State of the public health system.