Giving Medicare and maintaining health standards among the citizenry is a fundamental right of everyone.
Leaving the government’s supervising Minister for health to single-handedly determine what happens to our health status is uncalled for. It is democratic and infringes on the rights of Christians.
Recourse should be made to the parliament for oversight input. The public in a participatory democracy have a role to play in determining whether or not a listing of Notifiable Medical Conditions, NMC, is worth its place in the constitution.
The Minister as a state agent is even less than a minority in a democracy like South Africa. Listing disease conditions as NMC in a fiat is regarded as counterproductive and anti-democratic. The minister is not, and cannot be the sole authority in determining what constitutes NMC or not. Therefore this is open to public interrogation and debate before listing is made.
It is also questionable how long a disease remains classified as NMC. Knowing what bureaucratic red tape is, what no longer should be under NMC may stay indefinitely as such.
Public and parliamentary agreement and scrutiny of items on the list should be easier to review as either downgraded or expunged as the case may be.
The Draft regulations have shown inherent weakness in not revealing what makes an NMC item category 1 2 3 or 4.
The truth is that the severity of a disease is weightier than the transmission. We have had cases of Ebola, HIV as well as measles and chickenpox.
In every scientific environment, there are processes and conditions to methodically declare a disease of endemic or pandemic proportion. For our case, this ought to be clearly defined.
Leaving these critical definitions – public health importance, public place, endemic, etc – to the whims of executive determination leaves much to be desired. Being simply ‘suspected’ of having an NMC could lead to haphazard medical management. Suspects could be isolated, or hospitalized or vaccinated compulsorily and even wrongly.
These health regulations should be subject to the oversight function of the Parliament as representatives of the people. They return to their constituencies to do public presentations and debate of the regulations that are coming ahead of them. That is the way to go; that is the participatory democracy that assures the rights of the people.
For the church, her right to Religious freedom is guaranteed by sections 15 and 31 of the constitution. Therefore, where an assembly is required to show proof of vaccination to be able to use 50% of its venue capacity erodes the rights of the Christian Community. This is pointedly against freedom of worship, religious assembly and human rights.
That the Christian Community which properly organizes itself be disallowed full congregators fellowship while rowdy mass rallies of political groups and parties are free to do as they wish is not acceptable.
Even participants in such rallies are not mandated to show proof of vaccination. There are also unchecked sweating bodies shoving and pushing themselves for hours on end. This is clearly unhygienic, but monitoring agents do not bother about that.
What is good for the goose is good for the gander