If JG Strijdom, the prime minister after whom what is now the Helen Joseph Hospital was previously named, could see that hospital today he would probably be relieved that it no longer bears his name. Mrs Joseph might also wonder what she had done to deserve such a monument.

Mercifully my experience of this institution is limited. Some years ago a friend’s mother was admitted with a broken hip. So disgusted was he with the conditions in the casualty section that he almost wished she would die there and then. He had to borrow a blanket from the (private) ambulance that took her there. When she was finally admitted he had to wash the floor around the bed because it was filthy, as well as supply and change all the bed linen because the hospital did not do so. Fortunately, the surgical treatment was superb.

Another person I know abducted a friend of hers from the hospital because she feared leaving her there would kill the patient.

Then about a year ago I helped with the admission of another person who was seriously ill. She was expected to sit on a chair for more than 24 hours because there was no bed available. She was found one only when a senior official intervened at my request. Thereafter the nurses in the ward to which the patient was admitted victimised her because of my intervention. She told me that in her entire life no white person had ever spoken to her as harshly as the black nurses at Helen Joseph.

This same patient, now dying, was re-admitted a few months ago. When her family tried to visit her, the hospital could not find her for more than 24 hours. I arranged for a private doctor, but he was told he was not welcome in a public hospital.

I have no doubt there are many dedicated people working in these institutions under the most trying conditions. But I suspect that the few experiences I have related are typical. Over the past few years there has been a steady stream of chapter-and-verse accounts of poor and declining conditions, and avoidable deaths, in public hospitals in various parts of the country. Yet Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, the minister responsible for this tragic and shameful mess, now wants to fix private health care. This is as alarming as if she were to run for president. Is she not the minister who said some time ago that she would hesitate to be admitted to Baragawanth Hospital in Soweto, one of the largest hospitals under her care?

So bad is public health care that the department of economics at Stellenbosch University recently quoted studies showing that ‘even among the poorest 60% of the population, a third of visits to health facilities were to private providers’. A large proportion of unskilled and semi-skilled workers and their families use private health care far more than public health care, even though only one in five belong to a medical aid,’ said the report. Among the frequent complaints against public hospitals and especially clinics were long-waiting times, unavailability of medicines, wrong diagnoses, and incompetent staff. Another frequent complaint was that these facilities were not even clean. If ever there was an indictment of the health department it is the phenomenon of poor people using meagre pay packets to buy private medical care.

Two months ago various associations of medical professionals said the main problems of the public health system were severe shortages of doctors and nurses, lack of equipment, crumbling buildings, and poor working conditions. Shortages of equipment include not only expensive high-tech stuff, but even such basics as bed linen and cots for infants.

The minister complains that there is not enough competition in the private health sector. This is a matter for the competition authorities, not for her. Her refusal to license additional private facilities is hardly conducive to the promotion of competition.

The minister claims that ‘if we don’t intervene now, it’s possible private health care will shrink and perhaps collapse’. Nothing, however, is more likely to turn a possibility into a probability than if she does intervene. Perhaps ‘collapse’ is too strong a word – the private sector is too resilient and too much in demand for that. But one thing is certain: ministerial intervention is likely to make private hospitals look like public ones rather than the other way round.