World Cup South Africa 2010 Health Preparedness

category: Dafé’s Café - Daily Dose of Medical News,MyDocHub
by Dafé,

World Cup 2010 South Africa

South Africa’s health system consists of a large public sector and a smaller but fast-growing private sector. Health care varies from the most basic primary health care, offered free by the state to a highly specialized hi-tech health services available in the private sector for those who can afford it. South Africa is also in the forefront of medical tourism with its internationally recognized private hospitals and well-trained doctors.

The public sector is under-resourced and over-used, while the mushrooming private sector, run largely on commercial lines, caters to middle- and high-income earners who tend to be members of medical schemes (18% of the population), and to foreigners looking for top-quality surgical procedures at relatively affordable prices. The private sector also attracts most of the country’s health professionals.

World Cup 2010 Health Preparedness

South Africa is attempting to prepare its emergency services in case of a disaster at the World Cup, which begins this week. “But the public system won’t have to cope alone, the chief medical officer for local tournament organizers said in an interview last week. Dr. Victor Ramathesele outlined plans for what he said would be unprecedented coordination between the public system, the military and the private sector in case of emergency during Africa’s first World Cup.” The country has 5.7 million estimated to be living with HIV, has a high infant mortality rate and recently had a major hospital rely on generator power after a theft of power wires.

Ramathesele said that the “same beleaguered public system has coped with disasters in the past. … In 2001, more than 40 people were killed in a stampede before a match between local soccer teams at Johannesburg ‘s Ellis Park, one of the stadiums that will host World Cup matches.” There are no specific terror threats against the World Cup, officials say, but public health officials are also readying for major traffic accidents, stampedes and other disasters

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