News
HST Collects relevant news from a variety of sources, for your convenience. Select a story from below, or use our search feature to find stories of interest.

Health stats in a nutshell
Kerry Cullinan
2005-09-09

The North West has the least doctors, but your teeth may well rot in KwaZulu-Natal before you get to see a dentist, according to the SA Health Review.

Its not a good idea to get sick in the North West. It has the least doctors and professional nurses per capita in the country, with 21 doctors and 90 nurses for every 100 000 people.

In addition, North West spends the least on health R771 per person -- which is almost half the Western Cape, the biggest spender which spends R1383 per person.

Medical specialists are almost extinct in Mpumalanga (a total of 15 specialists, or one for every 200 000 people), while there are serious shortages in Limpopo and North West.

KwaZulu-Natal has the least dentists per capita in the country, followed by the Eastern Cape and Limpopo.

There are only seven psychologists, 15 physiotherapists and 35 pharmacists in the whole of the Northern Cape. Nurses in the province also have one of the heaviest workloads, seeing an average of 47 patients a day.

Over the past few years, nurses workloads have steadily increased from 23.5 patients a day to 29.4, undoubtedly because there are now 109 professional nurses per 100 000 people whereas five years ago, there were 120.

But there has been an improvement in vacancies. Whereas in 2003, 31% of posts were vacant, this year the number has dropped to 27%.

Almost 40 million of the countrys 46,8 million people depend on the public health sector. Last year, there were 100 000 hospital beds available, a decrease of 7000 since 1998.

While malaria cases have dropped by two-thirds over the past four years, measles cases have tripled over the same period, indicating that not enough children are being immunised against the disease.

While accurate TB figures are hard to find, the WHO ranks SA as having the 10th highest TB rate in the world and a low treatment success rate of 68% in 2003 for the curable infectious disease.

TB cases have jumped from 349 per 100 000 people in 2000 to 550 in 2003, with the worst affected provinces being the Northern Cape, Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. Cases in KZN have more than doubled in three years

Almost 30% of pregnant women are testing HIV positive in antenatal clinics, with a massive 38.5% of women aged 25 to 29 testing positive. KZN has the highest rate by far (40.7%), followed by Gauteng and Mpumalanga.

It is estimated that 16% of South Africas total population is infected with HIV.

Keywords	This Item is associated with the Following Keywords: .
You Can Comment on this Item, or View other people's Comments
Easy Print  Email to a friend

	Related News
	HIV rate stable in teens by increasing among older women (2006-07-28) Brain drain: health system on life support (2002-10-24) Understaffed Mthatha hospital 'cannot function' (2006-07-12) One in nine South Africans has HIV (2001-03-22) Census shows 10% growth (2003-07-10)

	Related Publications
	South African Health Review 1998 (2000-06-08) Leakages in PMTCT Care in a District Hospital in Kwazulu Natal, South Africa (2004-11-03) National HIV and Syphilis Antenatal Sero-Prevalence Survey in South Africa 2004 (2005-07-13) Census 2001 (2003-07-18) The District Health Barometer - Year 2005/06 (2007-02-07)

	Related Health Statistics
	Number of admissions for alcohol and other drug abuse (2007-05-21) Total number of health professional posts (0000-00-00) Utilisation rate PHC =>5 years (2005-06-06) Utilisation rate PHC <5 years (2005-06-06) Ratio of private to public sector per capita health expenditure (2004-02-11)

	Related Events
	RuDASA 10th Annual Conference on Rural Health (2006-08-10) International Conference on HIV/AIDS, Food and Nutrition Security (2005-04-14) 10th Anniversary Conference of the Children in Distress Network (2006-04-03) Invitation to the launch of The Cholera Outbreak report (2002-03-25) Paediatric HIV/AIDS Seminar (2003-09-19)

	Related links
	KwaZulu-Natal Sanitation Task Group The Topsy Foundation World AIDS Day Democratic Nurses Organisation of South Africa [DENOSA] Western Cape antiretroviral services

	Related Content
	ISDS Site: uMkhanyakude District Municipality (2004-05-10) ISDS Site: Kgalagadi District (2004-05-10) ISDS Site: Alfred Nzo District (2004-05-10) ISDS Site: Frances Baard District (2004-05-10) ISDS Site: Central Karoo District (2004-05-10)