“Just in giving my reflections, I'd like to say that I have seen the future of the National Health Insurance (NHI), which is here. And more importantly, as I've been going around, talking to the doctors as well as the scientists, they are the ones who were saying to me, and the nurses, we are ready for NHI. And those who have been campaigning against NHI need to be brought here to see how NHI is going to work.”

These were the words President Cyril Ramaphosa spoke during an oversight visit to the Steve Biko Academic Hospital in Pretoria, where he noted that the technology on display was integral to driving good medical care.

Ramaphosa conducted a visit to Nuclear Medicine Research Infrastructure facility, a one-stop-shop medical imaging facility dedicated to cancer and tuberculosis drug development and imaging-based clinical research, housed at the Steve Biko Academic Hospital.

The facility, is a partnership between the Department of Health, the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation, and the University of Pretoria, with significant support from the private sector.

Ramaphosa said he was impressed to see that this was the only centre on the African continent that had this nuclear medicine capability, noting a high level of security at the facility.

“They've got this wonderful machine and the beauty about this machine is that they designed it themselves and then got the manufacturers to do it, like Siemens,” he explained.

Ramaphosa noted the talent, engineering, knowledge and capability in the facility, to be able to produce such medical technology, while also applauding the cleaners and security at the hospital.

Ramaphosa noted referrals from private hospitals, arguing that this was proof that the hospital was a model for “all the good things”.

“…and this is the future of what NHI is all about, because they would not be coming here if Steve Biko Academic Hospital was not as good as it is,” he said, expressing satisfaction with research work done in the facility.

He pointed out diversity in the facility, with the rise in the number of women in senior key positions, which he said was impressive.

“And this is something that we need to celebrate. I have seen it in action here. That women run this facility, or a woman runs this facility, and other women run other facilities attached to this. That women are researchers, are professors, they are nurses, they are doctors,” he said.