Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga has revealed startling statistics of pupils who have disabilities but have very few specialists attending to their impediments.
Motshekga said in a written reply in Parliament yesterday that they were providing assistance to deaf learners.
She said there were 27 schools for the deaf with audiologists in the country. There were 3 700 hearing aids for the deaf learners in all provinces.
Motshekga said there were 13 speech therapists, 16 occupational therapists and five psychologists for deaf learners across South Africa.
Basic Education Department spokesperson Elijah Mhlanga could not be reached for comment on further details on the matter, including the total number of deaf learners.
Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said that in the screening of 3 million pupils last year, they discovered that one-third of them had hearing problems, oral hygiene issues and sight deficiencies.
Motsoaledi said the number of problems that learners experienced at an early age had shocked officials, but the department would strengthen its health-care programmes in schools.
This is one of the interventions to take place through the National Health Insurance (NHI) fund, which will be established later this year.
More details on the NHI fund will be announced in the Medium Term Budget Statement in October.
The government was working on the details of the fund and reviewing some of the laws, to align them with the establishment of the fund and its needs.
Motsoaledi said they had also found there were 3 000 optometrists in the country and only 250 of them were in the public health-care field.
The department would, as part of strengthening healthcare in NHI pilot sites, provide learners with spectacles.
Most of the learners were in the NHI pilot sites, where screening took place.
South Africa has 11 NHI pilot districts, and the establishment of the fund would be another stage in the NHI.
In her reply, Motshekga said the specialists in schools for the deaf were providing the necessary assistance to the learners.
The government has set up five key priorities since 2009, and they include education, health care, fighting crime and corruption, and land reform.