Healthcare demands are rising globally, and regardless of the approach to financing and delivering healthcare services, no country can meet all the healthcare demands of its population. The demand-supply gap for healthcare services in South Africa (SA) is large, particularly for the public sector. The objectives of this article are to examine some of the underlying factors contributing to this gap, and how the COVID- 19 pandemic is likely to impact on them, and to describe why SA needs to adopt an explicit and equity-informed approach to healthcare priority-setting to assist in managing the gap.
All Keywords