Adv. Thando Gumede

Haelix Laboratories

www.haelixlaboratories.com

What does your company do?

A. Problem Statement i. The impact of Colonisation and Apartheid’s on the current unequal and inaccessible healthcare system: South Africa's socio-economic and political history of colonisation and Apartheid has meant that our society continues to experience a multitude of inequities along the lines of race, gender, ability and class across all sectors and spheres of society. According to Prof Hoosen Coovadia MD et al, South Africa’s infrastructure has been moulded by the violent subjugation of Black people, appropriation of their land and resources, and the use of unjust laws, to force Black people to work for low wages to generate wealth for the white minority. Before 1994, political, economic, and land restriction policies structured society according to race, gender, class, ability and age-based hierarchies, which greatly influenced the organisation of social life, access to basic resources for health, and health services. Consequently, South Africa’s healthcare system faces many challenges and it has health outcomes that are worse than those in many lower income countries. Apartheid laws and policies have had a tremendously negative impact on South Africa’s health sector. According to the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Physicians for Human Rights Organization, the pre-1994 South African health care system limited access to health care for Black people and often ignored quality-of-care guidelines. In addition to this, abuses such as the refusal of emergency care treatment, falsification of medical records, denial or limitation of Blacks people’s access to ongoing medical care, and mistreatment of the mentally ill would often occur. Under apartheid the Bantustans had their own departments of health and the disparities in health between Black people and White people during apartheid have been well documented. For example, in 1981, there was 1 physician for every 330 White people but only 1 for every 91 000 Black people. Infant mortality was 20% in the Black population compared with 2.7% in the White population. This residue of historical dysfunction continues to be experienced across our current healthcare system and it dictates how diverse people experience access to quality, timeous and affordable healthcare. Most authors have concluded that the state of the healthcare system for Black people has not improved much since apartheid. It is recommended by Prof McIntyre D et al that the approach should be “vertical equity”, in which attempts are made to pull up those in the lower socio-economic levels and the disenfranchised. In other words, the approach to “equalising the system” would be to focus on addressing the major challenges which directly impact those affected by the negative socio-economic legacy of Apartheid. ii. The impact of Colonisation and Apartheid on Poverty, Access to High-Quality Private Healthcare and High-Quality Laboratory Services: The negative impact of inequitable access to quality healthcare for marginalised groups in South Africa is further amplified by the crisis of poverty in South Africa. In 2024, around 13.2 million people in South Africa were living in extreme poverty, with the poverty threshold at 2.15 U.S. dollars / 38.69 rands daily. This means that 139,563 more people were pushed into poverty compared to 2023. Moreover, it has been forecasted that this number will increase and that by 2030, over 13.4 million South Africans will live on a maximum of 2.15 U.S. / 38.69 rands dollars per day. Once again, due to the negative legacy of colonisation and Apartheid, this poverty is extremely skewed along the lines of race, gender and other social factors. According to the South African Human Rights Commission, 64% of Black South Africans live in poverty. Within the Black population, 71% of Black women live below the poverty line. These numbers are grossly negatively amplified by other socio-economic factors such as disability and sexual orientation. Poverty and pre-existing socio-economic infrastructural biases have predetermined who has access to quality healthcare and who does not. According to the Office of the Presidency’s General Health Survey published in 2024, only 15.7% of South Africans have medical-aid schemes because the high costs and poverty are a barrier. Approximately, 72% of White South Africans have medical-aid. However, only 11% of Black South Africans have medical aid. Nevertheless, there is no race, gender and socio-economic class that is immune to diseases. This makes the demand for healthcare unavoidable and necessary to sustain humanity. These statistics matter because South Africa has a two-tiered healthcare system, namely, the public and private healthcare systems. The public healthcare system serves about 80% of South Africans. It is characterised by being largely underfunded (due to a small tax base), leading to poor quality services with slow turnaround times. To add to the budgetary problem, the South African public healthcare system is plagued with corruption. The small tax base and corruption inevitably have a materially negative effect. On the other hand, the private healthcare system is well funded through medical aid schemes and from direct payments via patients themselves. Consequently, it serves the small percentage of people who are able to afford it, who are mainly White people and people of Asian descent. For marginalised people such a Black communities, women, persons with disabilities and the LGBTQIA+ communities to access high-quality healthcare is not as simple as moving from the public healthcare sector to the private healthcare sector. This is largely due to the economic disparities which are still remnant after centuries of social and economic disempowerment. Therefore, it is difficult for an indigent person living below the poverty line to utilise private healthcare (as an alternative) when they can barely afford basic goods and services, such as food, shelter and clothing. In fact, this is also a difficult decision for a person who is a middle-income earner and living slightly above the poverty line. Consequently, a vast majority of South Africans are either at the receiving end of poor-quality public healthcare or have totally dismissed their health altogether due to the expenses associated with private healthcare, which includes medical laboratory services. Consequently, many South Africans don’t know their health status which delays access to care. According to the World Health Organization, Regional Office for Africa, high-quality medical laboratories continue to play a critical role in all disease control and prevention programmes by providing timely and accurate information for use in patient management and disease surveillance. The term “quality” in medical diagnostics is defined as the reliability, accuracy, and timeliness of laboratory test results. According to the Chairman of the National Health Laboratory Services (“NHLS”) Board, Professor Eric Buch, 60% – 70% of clinical decisions and patient diagnoses are linked to pathology and laboratory services. However, Laboratory testing is mostly afforded by and accessible to White South African people, whilst the Black majority and women are the least economically viable demographic and consequently not easily able to access high-quality medical laboratory services. iii. The Negative Impact of the US and Development Agency Defunding and Closure: The impact of the United States of America’s defunding in South Africa and defunding of global development agencies has resulted in a major loss of donor funding which was used to fund community based healthcare, which includes medical laboratory services. These cuts have affected HIV and TB programmes, immunisation campaigns, and community-based healthcare services. There has been a major disruption to testing adherence and counselling services. The National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS) released a report which demonstrated that viral load testing had fallen by up to 21% among key groups in March and April 2025 as a result of the defunding. This testing is important because viral load testing measures how much virus is in the blood of people living with HIV who are on anti-retroviral treatment. It is normally done at least once a year and it checks whether the treatment is working and whether the virus is sufficiently suppressed to prevent it spreading to others. With less testing, fewer people who may transmit the virus will be identified. Missing a test can also indicate that a patient has dropped out of the system and may be missing treatment. It is especially important for pregnant women who may be at risk of transmitting HIV through childbirth, and for infants who need to be diagnosed and treated early to survive. The government has urged HIV patients who did check-ups at those clinics to go to public health centres instead, but public health centres often have long lines and staff can be unwelcoming to certain groups like sex workers and LGBTQIA+ communities. According to the data seen by Reuters, the number of viral load tests conducted for people aged 15-24 fell by 17.2% in April 2025 compared to April 2024, after dropping 7.8% year-on-year in March 2025. Total population testing was down 11.4% in April 2025. Maternal viral load testing was down 21.3% in April 2025 after falling by 9.1% in March 2025, and early infant diagnostic testing was down 19.9% in April after falling by 12.4% in March, the same data showed. The percentage of people who were virally suppressed among those tested also fell nationwide by 3.4% in March 2025 and 0.2% in April 2025, with steeper declines for young adults, a further sign that patients may have had their treatment interrupted, the data showed. Haelix Laboratories was founded as a direct response to South Africa’s crisis of inequitable healthcare and poor accessibility to quality healthcare for marginalised groups such as Black communities, women, persons with disabilities and LGBTQIA+ communities. Further to this, Haelix Laboratories remains committed to mitigating the impact of the widespread defunding in order to continue to be accessible to vulnerable communities. B. Innovation and Business Description Haelix Laboratories is a high social impact niche medical laboratory that provides affordable, fast and high-quality clinical pathology and cytology services to low-to-middle income earning and marginalised communities. We aid clinicians in making early diagnosis through the provision of accessible: 1. Screening and monitoring services; 2.Qualitative and quantitative measurement of relevant samples. Haelix Laboratories is disrupting the status quo by enabling otherwise vulnerable people and communities to access affordable, fast and high-quality private healthcare. This is particularly necessary in a time of a highly burdened public healthcare system, extreme poverty and socio-economic discrimination along the lines of race, gender, class, sexuality and ability. C. Vision Statement Southern Africa’s leading innovators and pioneers in affordable, fast and high-quality screening, monitoring, measurement and diagnosis in clinical pathology and cytology. D. Mission Statement Making healthcare accessible through affordable, fast and high-quality private medical laboratory services that prioritise the needs of low-to-middle income earning and marginalised communities.