The Health Committee highlights the urgent need for regulation in the traditional healing sector, as 300,000 practitioners remain unregistered.
Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Health has issued a sharp warning over what it calls a prolonged regulatory failure in the traditional health sector, saying about 300,000 practitioners remain effectively unregulated due to years of delays in implementing key provisions of the law.
The committee said the failure to operationalise the Interim Traditional Health Practitioners Council of South Africa has left a legal and regulatory vacuum nearly two decades after the Traditional Health Practitioners Act of 2007 was passed.
Committee chairperson Faith Muthambi said the situation was no longer acceptable.
“It cannot be acceptable that Parliament passed legislation in 2007, established a statutory council in 2014, and 12 years later the core provisions of that law remain unimplemented,” Muthambi said.
