Government is considering increasing the value of social grants in order to soften the blow of high food prices, health department director-general Thami Mseleku said on Tuesday.

Mseleku was briefing reporters at the Union Buildings in Pretoria on progress made by the government social cluster.

"What we are then saying is that government is looking at whether we could raise the social grants so that they could actually keep the value with the increased food and fuel prices.

"That's one of the measures being explored... not to increase the number of grants, but the value of grants."

This comes after the Congress of SA Trade Unions indicated it was planning a strike on Wednesday in protest against rising food, fuel and electricity prices.

Challenges to have impact on health

Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who chaired the meeting, said: "Poverty, hunger and malnutrition continue to present serious challenges which have an impact on the health of our people.

"This problem is now lately compounded by steep fuel and food costs which make it increasingly difficult for our people to access even basic foodstuffs."

The minister, who coughed several times during the briefing, indicated that she had been admitted to a Johannesburg hospital after contracting bronchitis and flu. She was discharged from hospital on Tuesday.

Commenting on whether a national food price regulator was being considered, Mseleku said: "There is no intention yet to regulate prices.

"We've emphasised that several times, that the measures that we're looking at are not necessarily at this stage including price regulation.

Tshabalala-Msimang called on people to grow their own vegetables.

Reducing medicine price costs

With regard to the progress made by government's food task team, she said: "We submitted a report to cabinet and we're being asked to do additional work and the minister of agriculture is convening a meeting this week and we will be finalising the report."

On the issue of reducing medicine price costs, Tshabalala-Msimang said she would have a meeting with the pharmaceutical pricing committee later this month to discuss the matter.

On the question of regulating the health sector, Mseleku said people's health could not be used as a commodity.

"There is no price fixing in health ," he said.

On HIV and Aids, Tshabalala-Msimang said the number of adults who voluntarily tested for the virus had grown from 25 percent to 35 percent while adding that there was a decrease in the number of people catching tuberculosis.

Two new vaccines

She said the diagnosis of tuberculosis would also be done quicker as MDR-TB test results would now be able to be processed within a week as opposed to three or four months.

The minister added that two new vaccines would be given to babies to reduce infant mortality.

"We are going to provide these two vaccines that are being finalised.

"We are in discussion with pharmaceutical companies that produce these vaccines and in fact I think on the continent when we do produce those vaccines we'll be the first country to do so.

" ... they are expensive. The two vaccines we are talking about are the vaccines against diarrhoea and also for pneumonia," said Tshabalala-Msimang.

Sapa