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Chairperson,
Ladies and gentlemen

Our gathering here today presents us with an exciting opportunity to celebrate the launching of a very significant and yet previously neglected health care service. As we celebrate this occasion, we are simultaneously reliving the memories of pain and anguish that our people have endured for decades as a result of occupational related diseases.

Communities in this district as well as workers from other parts of the province, have for many years reeled under the wrath of merciless mining companies who had no regard to their health and lives. Many of them have lost their lives. And many are doomed for life as a result of asbestosis and other forms of pneumoconiosis.

We are all aware that occupational health and safety services for black communities have always been deliberately neglected, notwithstanding the fact that mine workers from these communities contributed immensely to the economic development of this country. Successive apartheid regimes never cared to introduce these services in our province.

We therefore need to give credence and praise to the National Occupational Health and Safety Committee that was appointed by the National Minister of Health in 1995, whose report led to the establishment of occupational and environmental health sections within the department, as well as the development of national policy, norms and standards on occupational health and safety. All these developments resulted from the commitment of the democratic government to ensure that our people enjoy access to a meaningful, preventative, promotive, rehabilitative and indeed an integrated Primary Health Care service.

Occupational Health and Safety is today recognised as a national priority as evidenced by the provisions of chapter 14 of the White Paper on the Transformation of the Health System in South Africa, which gives guidelines regarding functions of provinces and districts in providing those services.

In the past few years, we have managed to cement partnerships between health, welfare, minerals and energy, environment and labour departments, business, NGOs and community-based organisations, around programmes which focus on service provision, research, identifying, controlling and preventing adverse effects and disseminating information to improve the health status of affected workers and communities.

All these efforts were necessary to counter the effects of neglect that we have already alluded to. You might not be aware that by 1996 there were neither occupational health specialist doctors nor trained nurses to attend to patients with occupational related diseases in the public health sector. Provinces had to rely on visiting doctors from the National Centre for Occupational Health, with the compensation process centralised at the Medical Bureau for Occupational Diseases in Johannesburg.

It was a combination of all these factors that informed the decision of the department in 1999 to decentralise these services to provinces, where they are needed most.

Master of ceremonies, we are proud of the fact that the Sekhukhune district was the first in the province to establish the service in the three institutions that are Dr M M Mphahlele, H C Boshoff and Mecklenburg hospitals. This sub-unit refer clients to and are continuously supported by the major occupational health unit established for the province, which is located within the Pietersburg/Mankweng Hospital Complex. We are proud of this development because it has addressed the problem of victims having to travel to Johannesburg with files of labour histories, chest x-ray films, clinical examination records, and all sorts of forms for lung function tests. We are particularly grateful that the establishment of these units have frustrated the manoeuvres of many of the fly by night operators who were rigging the victims of their benefits in the course of transporting them to and from Johannesburg.

A lot of warm words indeed for the magnificent amount of work done by these units, which in the period ranging from 1999 to 2001, had collectively attended to no less than 9263 victims. Dr M M M hospital attended to 3 844, Mecklenburg 2 847, and HC Boschoff 2 572.

We should accordingly convey our appreciation to the doctors, nurses and general assistants who are working in these units, as well as the companies which have provided the equipment and technical training. Many thanks and the best of luck to all of you. Let us together ensure that we sufficiently market and popularise these services, so that we reach out even the remotest areas in the province.

Chairperson, we should also take this opportunity to commend the magnificent work being done by the lawyers representing South African asbestosis victims in London, as well as organisations such as ACTSA who have always been with us throughout our struggle against Cape Plc.

We have recently received correspondence from London, informing us of the decision taken by the Royal Courts of Justice on Monday this week. The courts have ordered the lawyers representing our people and those of Cape Plc to 'engage in constructive discussions' within fourteen days, while the case is suspended. It is in this regard that we take comfort from the words of encouragement by ACTSA, when it said early this week, that " this dialogue is a welcome breakthrough, bringing to an end Cape's prolonged phase of denial. It has taken five years to force Cape to the negotiating table-they now have fourteen days to make an offer that is not insulting to the memory of the hundreds of asbestosis victims".

We thank you

Issued by Health, Northern Province

8 November 2001