By the SayPro Chief Finance Officer- Toka Keamogetswe
Distinguished Guests, Health Sector Partners, SayPro Colleagues, Community Stakeholders, and Friends,
Good morning.
It is a privilege to join you today on this important occasion — National Healthcare Decisions Day 2025, hosted by SayPro.
As the Chief Finance Officer of SayPro, I come to this conversation not only with a focus on numbers and budgets, but with a deeper understanding that every rand we spend in healthcare represents a life, a family, a future. Financial decisions in healthcare are moral decisions. And how we allocate resources reflects the kind of society we are striving to build.
National Healthcare Decisions Day is about empowering individuals to take control of their own health journeys — but it is also about how institutions like SayPro plan, prioritise, and invest in systems that support those personal decisions.
Let’s be clear: empowering people to make informed healthcare decisions requires investment in:
- Accessible health services across rural and urban areas
- Health literacy programmes that help people understand their rights and options
- Technology and data systems that allow for better decision-making
- Training for professionals to respect and uphold patient choices
- And community-based research and outreach, which ensures no one is left behind
At SayPro, we see healthcare not as a cost to be managed but as a value to be protected. Every investment we make in preventive care, decision-support education, and ethical health planning reduces long-term healthcare costs, improves lives, and strengthens our social fabric.
In 2025, our financial strategy has been aligned with this principle — to fund not just treatment, but empowerment. To not only manage budgets but to mobilise resources equitably and sustainably.
We have worked closely with our partners to develop budgeting frameworks that support patient-centered care, and to ensure that every rand spent contributes to dignity, autonomy, and access. This is financial leadership with purpose.
I want to take this opportunity to thank our healthcare partners, our donor networks, and our internal teams for their continued commitment to putting people first — not just in policy, but in funding, planning, and delivery.
As we move forward, I call on all financial and operational leaders — across government, business, and civil society — to view healthcare decisions as an investment in our nation’s resilience, productivity, and humanity.
Let us continue to fund wisely, spend ethically, and support systems that enable every South African to make healthcare decisions with confidence, knowledge, and hope.
Happy National Healthcare Decisions Day 2025.
Let us invest in lives. Let us invest in dignity. Let us invest in choice.
Thank you.
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