Economic Freedom Fighters 1st National People's Assembly Discussion Documents:

People's Power for Economic Freedom

National Health Policy

Discussion Document for the EFF National Health Policy

Preface

South Africa is plunging into a Disease-ridden abyss, by design. To combat the destructive scourge of lack of access to healthcare system, the EFF will implement revolutionary changes to the principles and foundations of Healthcare in South Africa, which urgently addresses the sources and causative factors in the promotion and progression of diseases in the population, while simultaneously instituting systems for ensuring effective and safe treatments for those individuals languishing in a diseased status.

Our take is that good health on equal terms for the entire population based on the CUBAN model which emphasises Prevention over Cure, should be the mantra. Much as health facility infrastructure expansion, it is equally important to put emphasis not only on infrastructure, but also on preventative health system.

Part 1: Status Quo in South Africa 2014

Medical care institutions and Pharmaceutical drugs are the typical target of the prevailing South African health system interventions. While these components can improve the quality of life in the short term for assisting sick or injured individuals, they do little to prevent or resolve major chronic problems like cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, AIDS, dementias and cardiovascular diseases.

Part 1: Pillars of the EFF Healthcare Policy and Health Transformation

The overall national objective of the EFF public health policy is to create societal and environmental conditions in South African society so that the entire population can enjoy good health on equal terms.

The Pillars of the EFF Healthcare policy are:

1) Prevention and Safety

No system, product or treatment may unduly cause harm, or be enforced on any individual seeking assistance, without full disclosure and presentation of options, with the absolute sovereign right of any individual to refuse such options and elect to search other options without fear, rejection or intimidation, being held inviolable. 

Any professional or operative within the Health or Food system who is aware that the system, methods, compounds, production processes or techniques are inappropriate to preserving health, are hazardous, or are suspected to cause harm without benefitting the recipient of the treatment or product, will be held accountable.

2) Efficacy

Any system, method, protocol, substance, formulation or related intervention must be demonstrated by the effecting party to have reasonable efficacy, and shall not be designed solely for maintaining states of chronic diseases. Any intervention which merely prolongs states of disease without resolving the causative factors, will be phased out of the healthcare system.

No intervention which spawns further health problems will be permitted as a procedure or protocol, unless there is specific independently proven demonstration that the benefit of the intervention greatly exceeds the hazards of the interaction or system, and that such an intervention is used only for immediate preservation of life while the underlying causes of the disease state are resolved.

Any intervention must by definition have an End-point: the stage at which the diseased or injured person has been restored to health. The strategies for achieving this End-point must be clearly demonstrated by the purveyors of the intervention, system or products.

The onus of incontrovertible proof will vest with the applicant (manufacturer, producer, IP-owner), and will be subject to verification by the Health Systems Evaluation division in the future EFF Government.

3) Access and Infrastructure

Every South African shall have access on an equal basis to quality medical care systems and infrastructure.

By instituting a new focus on genuine preventative measures through cleaner environments, improved nutrition and reduction in hazardous materials, funding can be released to improve facilities and infrastructure, and to implement effective Primary Healthcare systems.

The system of Primary Healthcare must be effectively implemented in order to provide first-line local access to healthcare, information, knowledge and basic nutrition products.

The National food-security schemes can be parallel driven through the Primary Healthcare networks.

4) Humanity

At all levels and phases throughout the Healthcare system and infrastructures, the right to Human Dignity, Respect and Sovereignty will be paramount.

The current status in South African and global healthcare systems have lost sight of the humanity paradigm, and have reduced the affected individuals to a status of mechanical objects. This loss of Humanity must be addressed in the training and preparation of all healthcare workers and professionals as part of their licensing terms and conditions.

5) Nutritional Security

Nutrition is far broader and more pervasive than adequate volumes of foods, even of safe foods.

Safe food, free from health-destroying compounds or processes, and containing optimal levels of natural nutritional substances, are achievable through good agricultural practices, good production practices, and fortification with natural minerals and plant extracts where appropriate.

Agricultural practices shall ensure the safest methods for growing, harvesting and processing harvests, and through good agricultural practices, deliver the best nutritional standards for all foods produced on the lands. Organic and Conservation Agriculture growing systems are considered to be the only viable and sustainable systems for producing high nutrient-content foods, and reduction in toxic loads in the environment and in the food products.

Genetically Modified Organisms are deemed to be a destructive anathema, and will be removed from the South African agricultural and food production systems. Food producers who include GM content in their products will be fined, warned and then closed down if they fail to address their problematic production processes.

There is a direct causative link between GMO, agricultural poisons, staple-foods contamination and the rise in National chronic disease states, without accountability vesting in the producers or manufacturers. This as a matter of urgency must change, and full legal and financial accountability must vest with these parties, who shall also be liable for the damages and suffering of the afflicted people, the costs to the National Treasury for the medical management of these diseases, and the massive damage to the environment caused by the growing of GMO crops.

6) Full Disclosure

Accountability and liability vests in the owner, grower, producer, manufacturer and packers of any products intended for public consumption or usage, or that would impact on the human and natural environments, for the accurate and comprehensive detailing of all substances in the production, product, device, artefact or system.

No substance or artefact may be produced which contains any of the Prohibited Substances, or uses any of the Prohibited Substances during the growing, producing or manufacturing processes.

Failure to accurately disclose the contents of a product constitutes wilful deception, and will be subject to corrective or related measures, in accordance with the severity of the breach of the non-disclosure and the impact that this non-disclosed information would have on the health of the users or consumers, and their constitutional right to know before making use of the product.

7) Environment

The health of a nation is inseparable from the health of the environment.

Achievement and maintenance of health is not possible in a toxic or contaminated environment.

The human and environmental hazards relating to the growing of GMOs are so serious that these products are prohibited at every level, including their usage in the Pharma-drug

Part 2: The foundation of this escalating crisis is linked directly to several overt and inescapable factors:

The failure of any genuine economic reform post-1994, and an abject failure by Government to implement the principles and spirit embedded in the Constitution. In contrast, there has been a rapid divergence between the advantaged few and the disadvantaged masses, and the gap is widening daily.

The relentless poverty spawns a multitude of chronic health challenges deriving from sub-functional nutrition, loss of nutritional diversity or quality, proliferation of cheap hazardous commercial foodstuffs, diminished lifestyle options, stress, helplessness and physiological vulnerability to disease;

Increasing disparity between those that have control over economic resources, and those that are marginalised and vulnerable;

Rampant corruption endemic throughout South African political, social and economic structures, resulting in the massive diverting of resources and opportunities towards the benefit of those that already have significant resources, to the crippling detriment of vulnerable groups, and the alienated and impoverished masses;

The decimation of food diversity and food security, destruction of the nutritional quality of foods, bad food production practices and proliferation of incorporated hazardous substances, compounded by the massive and sinister infiltration of health-destroying Genetically Modified Organisms and the increasing reliance of GMO crops in agriculture on extremely dangerous and environmentally destructive poisons in their growth and production. We are currently witnessing the beginning phases of the destruction of human health arising from these factors, and this rate of chronic disease prevalence will become explosive until the South African socio-economic systems collapse.

Collapse of South African food growing systems and community-based farming, resulting in marginalised people being forced into a state of increasing poverty, food-insecurity, propelling them to consume hazardous commercial foods in a desperate effort to preserve life. This loss of food security is leading to rapid decline in national health status;

Proliferation of scientifically proven problematic, dangerous and hazardous chemicals and substances throughout the growing, manufacture and production of food and food products, Pharma-drugs, vaccinations and synthetic vitamins, commercial products , "nutritional" products, construction industry materials, mining environment, and most "modern" socio-economic environments, which are causing the massive spike in a wide range of acute and chronic disease.

At the current rate of increase in chronic disease prevalence and the problematic systems for managing disease through the perpetual application of yet more problematic and ineffective chemicals and substances (Pharma-drugs), within 5 years, the South African economy will be in a state of terminal collapse. This crisis is currently playing out into reality in the United States of America, which has the highest rate of GMO agriculture, vaccination and proliferation of Pharma-drugs globally.

The proposed NHI, like ObamaCare, is hugely problematic under the current proposed frameworks, as it creates platforms for uncontrolled fiscal drain through back-room deals with Pharma-drug companies, which operate outside of the laws of the country, and create for themselves a legal status of zero liability for any harm inflicted on the population, and zero accountability for the usefulness, safety or efficacy of any of their products or methods instituted.

The risk of neo-colonial plundering of our National resources is massive, and the basic paradigms of the envisaged NHI have to diametrically change to reflect a minimum 50% focus on preventative health maintenance which does NOT imply mass vaccination programmes, such as is being touted currently. Vaccinations contain problematic substances which lead to future health challenges, and the entire system of conferring immunity needs to be revisited and reinvented. There are viable homeopathic options at 10% of the cost of hypodermic vaccinations, with none of the hazardous side-effects of main-stream injectable products.

Genuine disease prevention programmes can only validly be considered that incorporate sound access to increased nutritional substances in order to build strong immune systems. This is not achievable through pharma-drug interventions, and nor is it intended to be. Pharm-drug systems only profit from disease, not health, and therefore an impassable conflict of interest exists in calling on these same organisations to resolve or reduce endemic levels of disease in South Africa.

Without a stringent policy of enforcing accountability, safety, efficacy and affordability, any future effort to implement an effective health-care system is likewise doomed to failure, and the national population remain victim of intentionally-manufactured debilitating diseases, and the economy and society will remain entrapped in a cycle of disease-creation, disease-maintenance and massive fiscal drain.

Africa and South Africa cannot afford the financial burden of maintaining chronic diseases that are deviously and intentionally caused through the agricultural-food-pharma-drug ("healthcare") transnational syndicates - this trap has been specifically designed since the 1960s by American cartels to economically enslave global nations, and they intend to perfect their strategies and implementation before 2020;

Part 3: EFF Health Systems will ensure good health on equal terms for the entire population

Primary Objective: Prevention of Disease and promotion of Good Health through effective interventions and access to appropriate nutrition.

Primary Objective: Vehicles for promoting improved population health:

Sound, safe nutrition free from harmful additives, substances, chemicals or other problem compounds.

Clean safe environments, free from noxious chemicals and pollutants

Sound agricultural practices which minimise usage of dangerous agri-chemicals, and the re-establishment of non-GMO organic (traditional) food growing as the national standard.

The dangers of GMO to human and environmental health have been scientifically proven, and these GE products cannot be sustained as an option in the food production chains. Full legal liability must be carried by the producers of this material.

Appropriate education and information for empowering people to maintain good standards of health.

Access to natural health-fortifying nutrients to prevent disease.

Elimination of all hazardous substances from human and natural environments, and from food, drugs, allopathic as well as complementary health-related products, vaccinations and consumer or lifestyle products.

Strict validated control over or prohibition of all problematic, toxic or unproven new substances.

Secondary Objective: Effective Medical-care and Trauma Management systems.

By efficiently instituting the Primary Objective, the pressure is lifted off the Secondary Objective, thereby facilitating improved services, infrastructure and access for those who require Trauma services or for medical help relating to non-preventable or urgent health challenges.

Part 3: Health is declared to be far greater than the mere absence of disease.

The EFF Health policy incorporates proactive measures to promote good public health through sound nutrition, freedom from hazardous chemicals, safe foods and drinks, disease prevention and health promotion strategies. These components include effective management of communicable diseases, improved eating habits, physical activity, and education relating to the dangers of alcohol, narcotics, doping, tobacco and gambling addictions.

The core underlying emphasis in the National Healthcare Policy, vests in the empowerment of people and the freedom of informed choice.

12 key components form the frameworks of the EFF Health Policy:

1) Social and Cultural determinants

2) Political and Socio-Economic determinants, and specifically the challenge of Poverty

3) Public policy to encourage participation and influence in Society

4) Secure and favourable health conditions during Childhood, Adolescence and Retirement.

5) Lifestyle determinants. Reduced use of tobacco and alcohol, a society free from illicit drugs and doping and a reduction in harmful effects of excessive gambling.

6) Socialising and Empowering determinants

7) Individual as well as Collective interventions

8) Increased physical activity and good eating habits.

9) Social and Demographic conditions and determinants

10) Working life interventions - a healthier and safer working environment

11) Environmental and Consumer Protection interventions - towards healthy and safe environments, food and products.

12) Health-care interventions and services must promote health and wellness, as opposed to merely managing diseases.

In order to make significant improvements in the health of our population we need to expand our National Healthcare strategies to address the political, economic, social, nutritional, environmental and cultural determinants of health.

Part 4: Definition of EFF National Healthcare and Health Policy

Unfortunately, South Africa has positioned "health policy" to mean "medical care policy". Medical care, however, is only one variable in the pervasive broad health equation.

The main components of the EFF national health policy are underpinned by:

Thorough evaluation of the political, economic, social, and cultural determinants of health;

The lifestyle determinants, which have been the most visible types of public interventions; and

The socializing, educational and empowering determinants, which link the first and second components national health policy: the individual interventions and the collective interventions.

Public health is affected by everything from individuals' own choices and habits to structural factors, such as external environments, economic constraints, poverty, access to infrastructures, and efficacy, usefulness and safety of any treatments.

Public health is an interdisciplinary scientific field involving the study of the importance of various factors for the population's health, the effects of political measures and the impact of public health on the economy and on society as a whole and the impact on various groups in the population.

 A multi-disciplinary working method is important and is central to the success of long-term, effective public health status.

Part 5: Status Quo in South Africa 2014

Medical care institutions and Pharmaceutical drugs are the typical target of the prevailing South African health system interventions. While these components can improve the quality of life in the short term for assisting sick or injured individuals, they do little to prevent or resolve major chronic problems like cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, AIDS, dementias and cardiovascular diseases.

Part 6: Framework for the EFF National Health Policy

Two distinct aspects of Healthcare form part of the EFF Health Policy, and are planned along a 50-50 allocation of resources.

The proactive health building principle is based on Eastern, Nordic and Cuban systems, in which the sound maintenance of genuine Health, and prevention of chronic health disorders, results in a minimal degree of the population requiring conventional medical treatments for unresolved diseases and trauma interventions. This change in healthcare paradigm alleviates the massive over-burden on the formal South African healthcare systems, in which the escalating rates of diseases is leading to a collapse in the public medical facilities and infrastructures.

50%: Preventative Healthcare: Directed towards building and maintaining good health status in the general population. This is achieved through improving the standards of nutrition, empowerment through education and information, quality of foods, natural nutritional supplementation, good water and sanitation, and freedom from harmful chemicals, denatured foods, and food additives. A major component of preventative health is the facilitation of growing household vegetables and fruits. This autonomy can be achieved through the roll-out of training, through school programmes, through community programmes, and the EFF Government provision of non-GMO seeds.

50%: Medi-Care System: Directed towards trauma management (accidents, serious assault or life-threatening injuries), prescription drugs, chronic and acute illness which have become pervasive enough to warrant accessing formal facilities and Pharmaceutical drugs, and Healthcare facilities such as Hospitals, Clinics, Hospices.

Part 7: Framework for controlling, approving or banning problem substances.

The EFF will institute the appropriate infrastructures which will have the primary function of assessing and scheduling all compounds, additives, adjuncts, chemicals, techniques, systems, preparations, catalysts, or any other intervention throughout the growing, manufacturing, production, formulation, importation of any products, interventions or systems intended for human usage, application or consumption, whether relating to healthcare, nutrition, foods, lifestyle or any other aspect of the human and natural environments.

A specialised division within the EFF National Health Management infrastructures will have the function of classifying and determining the safety, usefulness, viability, sustainability, and ethics of every substance or chemical used through the healthcare and food production systems.

Full accountability regarding processes and inclusion of substances in products or systems, will vest in the originator, owner, manufacturer or producer of the products or systems, as well as the professional parties engaged in using or applying these products throughout the medical and food sectors.

The EFF will develop and research a comprehensive schedule will be developed into an operational dossier by this Division, and will remain current and relevant with its research and selection systems.

This Schedule will control and direct all substances and compounds which are used throughout the Food and Medical production, manufacture, preparation and delivery systems, products and methods. Every manufacturer, grower and producer will comply with the stipulations relating to the substances and compounds detailed in the schedule.

For all compounds, products and substances graded and scheduled as GRAS (Generally Regarded as Safe), usage is not restricted and all products or formulations containing only these classifications are approved subject only to formal submission and accreditation of the formulation and constituents, and related disclosures to the EFF Central Licensing Authority. A licence to produce will then be issued.

For all compounds, products and substances graded as Hazardous or Toxic, usage, application or inclusion is prohibited. This would apply to compounds and substances such as Mercury, Aluminium, Glyphosate, and 2,4D, and any other substances scheduled as dangerous to human and environmental health.

Issued by the EFF, October 27 2014

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