|
Think global, act local
|
|
|
Thebe Mabanga
Financial Mail
Friday, May 14, 2010
|
|
|
|
Newly appointed director-general of health Precious Matsoso will bring a global perspective to the department. Since 2007, she has been public health, innovation & intellectual property director in the office of the DG of the World Health Organisation (WHO), where she has worked since 2005.
Speaking from Geneva, Matsoso said SA, with relatively more resources than many developing countries, and expert knowledge regularly used by the WHO, should better manage these to improve its health care.
Her previous job was head of the Medicines Control Council, a position she held from 1998. She was part of the council’s leadership when it rejected Virodene, a controversial Aids drug backed by the ANC. “The trial was unethical and badly designed,” she says.
Democratic Alliance MP Mike Waters says Matsoso’s tenure as head of the MCC turned what had been a world-class body into a “laughing stock”. Her response is that all she did was effect transformation, bring in senior black staff and enable the body to deal with African traditional medicine and Eastern medicine.
Matsoso (48) enrolled to study pharmacy at Turfloop in 1980 but had to leave because of her activism as a member of the Azanian Student Organisation .
She graduated from the University of the Western Cape, worked in state and private hospitals and started her own pharmaceutical business before becoming a director in the health department. Matsoso holds a health management diploma (UCT), a master’s in law and ethics (Dundee) and has served on the ANC’s national health insurance (NHI) task team. She says NHI can be successfully implemented “if done incrementally” but the challenge will be “sourcing the skills” required to run it.
|
|
|
 Print this article |
 Send to a friend
|
|