![\"Foreign](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/009f2f73-foreign-doctors-hold-out-a-lifeline.jpeg\")
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Doctors will need to pay attention not only to a patient\u2019s physical health but also the person\u2019s emotional, social and psychospiritual aspects.<\/p>\n
South Africa\u2019s healthcare system is in crisis<\/a> \u2014 and has been for several years. The South African Medical Research Council<\/a> (SAMRC) last year noted that although disadvantaged individuals do have access to free healthcare, the quality of healthcare they receive is not always adequate.<\/p>\n \u201cOf 696 facilities evaluated in the Office of Health Standards Compliance\u2019s latest report, only five met 80% of the required performance standards, which include drug availability and proper infection control,\u201d SAMRC writes.<\/p>\n Additionally, the healthcare system is facing an exodus of workers. Since July 2023, 10 000 healthcare workers have sought residency in Canada alone<\/a>. The perceived threat to livelihood and professional autonomy that the NHI brings also risks deepening this facet of the crisis.<\/p>\n Then there is the fact that in cases where South Africa can provide care in a strained system, it is not providing the right kinds of care. Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) \u2014 obesity, cardiovascular diseases, cancers and diabetes, for example \u2014 remain a major cause of death in the country: in 2010, they caused a similar number of deaths to HIV\/AIDS and tuberculosis combined<\/a>. From 1997 to 2018 the rate of death caused by major NCDs increased by almost 60 percent<\/a>. And yet, they remain perennially mistreated.\u00a0<\/p>\n How we manage NCDs should be a focus of the NHI \u2014 but it requires a full recalibration of how we understand health.<\/p>\n Ancient Egyptians and Greeks<\/a> treated illnesses from the angle that body and mind were joined. One affected the other, and vice versa; a sick part affected an entire person. This was how medicine operated for hundreds of years.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n But in the early 20th century, biomedicine came to the fore, and medical progress began to occur in research and disease management: cancer treatment, vaccines, antibiotics, organ transplants.\u00a0<\/p>\n Medicine became a science, and the point of science is to eliminate subjectivity. This meant the mind and body were separated, and a person\u2019s emotions were seen to have nothing to do with a disease. But, in certain cases such as cases of NCDs and mental health issues, treating diseases as purely physical or purely mental has significant drawbacks.<\/p>\n NCDs are lifestyle diseases. By their very nature they are diseases that arise from the ways in which a person lives \u2014 physically, socially, psychologically and emotionally.<\/p>\n But at medical school, doctors are trained to find physical symptoms. When a patient comes in suffering from a chronic ailment \u2014 which may have arisen equally from whatever facet of their life, but is now representing itself physically \u2014 a doctor looks for and treats the physical issue.<\/p>\n The other aspects \u2014 the emotional, social and psychospiritual nature of humans \u2014 are not given as much attention. The physical problem \u2014 the shortness of breath, chest pain, lack of appetite, weakness, trouble sleeping \u2014 may be cured. But the sickness goes on. The patient does not become truly healthy.<\/p>\n