Multimorbidity in South Africa: Is the health system ready?

Multimorbidity is likely to be a significant contributor to ill health and inequality in South Africa and yet has been largely overlooked. This paper focuses on the findings of a recent large study that highlighted emerging issues - namely (i) the high levels of multimorbidity among three key groups - older adults, women, and the wealthy; (ii) discordant and concordant disease clusters among the multimorbid. Narrative. Not applicable. We discuss the implications of each emerging issue for health systems policy and practice. Although key policies are identified, many of these policies are not implemented and are therefore not part of routine practice, leaving much space for improvement.