Challenges in the devolution of environmental health service delivery in South Africa

Abstract

Rapid urbanization is a critical challenge for those charged with service provision to urban areas in developing countries. Due to so many South Africans living under poor environmental conditions, our country is confronted by an enormous burden of disease. Providing adequate environmental health services continue to present many problems in South Africa. Despite the implicit knowledge expressed in policy documents, mission statements and broad aims of organisations striving to address environmental health service delivery, this knowledge is seldom found to be evident in current practice. There is an evident "separation of practice from theory". Investigating current practices and incorporate the development of the practitioners understanding of their current practice and transforming the practitioners' implicit knowledge into explicit knowledge. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009.