Potential of the Health System to address Poverty and Inequality

As poverty and inequality are closely interrelated with health and the health system, there is much potential for the health system to help address structural poverty and persistent inequalities, especially in the way in which the system is financed and the level of public spending on health services. Prof. Di McIntyre, who was based until her retirement at the UCT’s Health Economics Research Unit, School of Public Health and Family Medicine, and her colleague, A/Prof. John Ataguba, point out that the country’s health care financing mechanisms are not realising their redistributive potential. Prof. McIntyre, who was one of the PII’s key contributors to the Mandela Initiative process, addressed these dynamics in relation to universal health care as embodied by the new National Health Insurance policy in her valedictory lecture.