{"title":"The Ministerial Advisory Committees and 3 years of COVID-19 expertise - is the Department of Health's model for information-sharing pandemic-ready?","authors":"M Richter, Y Nokhepheyi","doi":"10.7196/SAMJ.2024.v114i8.1943","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Effective pandemic decision-making depends on scientific expert evidence, transparency about public health policy decision-making, its rationales and the evidence on which it is based. The South African government laudably committed its COVID-19 response to be guided by science and evidence. Yet, the expert advice that it received was not always readily made available to the public. This submission analyses the time elapsed between the submission of COVID-19 Ministerial Advisory Committees memoranda to the Minister of Health, and the Department of Health's subsequent publication of these for the period August 2020 - January 2024. It also summarises the outcomes of the Health Justice Initiative's access to information legal action against the department on expert advice and government decision-making during the pandemic.</p>","PeriodicalId":49576,"journal":{"name":"Samj South African Medical Journal","volume":"114 8","pages":"e1943"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Samj South African Medical Journal","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.7196/SAMJ.2024.v114i8.1943","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"MEDICINE, GENERAL & INTERNAL","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Effective pandemic decision-making depends on scientific expert evidence, transparency about public health policy decision-making, its rationales and the evidence on which it is based. The South African government laudably committed its COVID-19 response to be guided by science and evidence. Yet, the expert advice that it received was not always readily made available to the public. This submission analyses the time elapsed between the submission of COVID-19 Ministerial Advisory Committees memoranda to the Minister of Health, and the Department of Health's subsequent publication of these for the period August 2020 - January 2024. It also summarises the outcomes of the Health Justice Initiative's access to information legal action against the department on expert advice and government decision-making during the pandemic.
期刊介绍:
The SAMJ is a monthly peer reviewed, internationally indexed, general medical journal. It carries The SAMJ is a monthly, peer-reviewed, internationally indexed, general medical journal publishing leading research impacting clinical care in Africa. The Journal is not limited to articles that have ‘general medical content’, but is intending to capture the spectrum of medical and health sciences, grouped by relevance to the country’s burden of disease. This will include research in the social sciences and economics that is relevant to the medical issues around our burden of disease
The journal carries research articles and letters, editorials, clinical practice and other medical articles and personal opinion, South African health-related news, obituaries, general correspondence, and classified advertisements (refer to the section policies for further information).