South Africa Has a Heritage of Self-Care. Now We Need to Build on It.

By Farhan Haroon, General Manager, Haleon South Africa

For generations, self-care has been part of everyday life in South African homes.

It is reflected in the habits, knowledge and routines passed from one generation to the next: looking after our teeth, responding to the first signs of a cold or headache, managing everyday health needs responsibly, and understanding when it is time to seek professional care.

South Africa does not have a single self-care tradition. Practices differ across families, communities, cultures, and generations. But there is a common thread: people have long played an active role in looking after their own health and the wellbeing of those around them. That, too, is part of our healthcare heritage.

It can also be seen in the familiar products that have occupied bathroom cabinets and medicine cupboards for decades. Some have become deeply embedded in the way South African families think about everyday health.

At Haleon, we recognise that we have a place within this story. While Haleon became an independent consumer health company in 2022, our relationship with South African consumers stretches back much further through brands that have been trusted across generations. Grand-Pa and Med-Lemon, for example, have become familiar names in everyday healthcare for many South Africans.

But heritage is not simply about longevity, and trust cannot simply be inherited.

It has to be continually earned through science, quality, relevance, and a deep understanding of people’s changing health needs. More importantly, heritage brings responsibility: to ask not only what previous generations trusted, but what kind of self-care culture we want the next generation to inherit.

That question matters increasingly as South Africa considers how to improve access to healthcare while making the best possible use of stretched health resources.

Self-care is sometimes understood narrowly as what people do when they become unwell. Its role is broader. The World Health Organization recognises people as active agents in managing their own healthcare, through lifestyle choices and interventions that can complement care delivered through formal health systems.

Importantly, responsible self-care does not replace doctors, pharmacists or other healthcare professionals. It complements them by enabling people to take greater agency over appropriate aspects of their everyday health while understanding when professional support is needed.

In South Africa, where access to healthcare and reliable health information remains unequal, that distinction is important.

Helping more people to prevent illness where possible, manage appropriate everyday health needs and make informed decisions about when to seek care can benefit individuals. It can also help healthcare resources reach the people who need them most.

There is growing evidence that the impact of self-care extends well beyond the individual.

The Global Self-Care Federation’s Global Social and Economic Value of Self-Care 2.0 report examines self-care through three interconnected dimensions: prevention, access, and quality of life. Its findings make the case that responsible self-care can create value not only for people, but also for healthcare systems, societies and economies.

Globally, the report estimates that self-care using registered non-prescription medicines generates around US$144 billion in annual health-system savings, frees 2.2 billion hours of physician time and contributes 43.6 billion additional productive days each year. It also estimates that 24 million quality-adjusted life years are gained annually through self-care.

These are global estimates and should not be assumed to translate directly into South African outcomes. They do, however, illustrate an important principle: when people are empowered to manage appropriate aspects of their everyday health, the benefits can extend far beyond the medicine cabinet.

The findings become particularly thought-provoking when viewed through an African lens.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the report estimates that self-care contributes around three additional productive days per person each year, compared with a global average of six. It identifies limited access to self-care interventions, despite significant potential need, as one factor behind the region’s lower productivity effect.

For South Africa, that gap should not simply be seen as a statistic. It should prompt a bigger question: what could become possible if more people had the knowledge, confidence and access needed to practise responsible self-care?

The answer is unlikely to lie in any single intervention.

It requires stronger health literacy so that people can distinguish between conditions they can manage appropriately themselves and those requiring professional care. It requires responsible access to evidence-based self-care solutions. It requires greater emphasis on prevention and earlier action. And it requires collaboration between government, healthcare professionals, industry and communities.

Industry has a role to play within that ecosystem, but it also has obligations.

As people’s health needs and expectations evolve, companies such as Haleon must continue to make responsible self-care easier to understand and navigate. That means supporting access to credible health information, maintaining rigorous standards of science and quality, and helping consumers make informed choices about their health.

This is where the idea of heritage becomes forward-looking.

South Africa’s self-care heritage is not simply a history of familiar products. It is a history of people taking an active role in their everyday health.

The opportunity now is to build on that foundation.

The Global Social and Economic Value of Self-Care 2.0 report concludes that the full potential of self-care has not yet been realised and projects that, with appropriate policies and expanded access, its global health, social and economic benefits could increase substantially by 2040.

For South Africa, the challenge is not to assume those global projections will automatically become local outcomes. It is to create the conditions in which more of our own potential can be realised.

We already have a heritage of self-care. Our responsibility now is to strengthen it — enabling more South Africans to make informed decisions about their everyday health, supporting a more resilient healthcare system and helping to preserve valuable healthcare capacity for those who need it most.

What we pass on to the next generation should be more than trusted habits and familiar brands. It should be the knowledge, confidence and access to take an informed and responsible role in their own health.

Source: Briefly News