More than 300 declared state patients are sitting in prisons awaiting placement in health institutions, with the Portfolio Committee on Correctional Services warning that these delays pose human-rights risks and are straining both correctional and public health systems, reports the Cape Argus.
At a Department of Health briefing on the legislative framework for the admission, treatment, review, and reintegration of these patients, committee chairperson Kgomotso Ramolobeng said while members had noted the outline of the legal and institutional processes involved, they remained concerned about ongoing challenges affecting the system.
These include capacity constraints at mental health facilities, delays in periodic reviews, and poor co-ordination between the criminal justice system and health services.
Ramolobeng said declared state patients represented a particularly vulnerable group whose rights had to be protected while also ensuring public safety.
Committee members also raised concerns about overcrowding in mental health institutions, the adequacy of rehabilitation programmes, and the need for stronger collaboration between the departments of Health, Justice and Constitutional Development, and Correctional Services.
Ramolobeng said the number of declared state patients had been increasing steadily over the past few years, and this was exacerbated by courts increasingly declaring individuals convicted of relatively minor offences as state patients.
South Africa has 14 designated health facilities that can admit state patients – but none in Mpumalanga – with 942 psychiatrists, about 75% of them in the private sector, despite most of the patients depending on public healthcare services.
The Health Department was planning to implementing interventions through its Human Resources for Health Strategy to address shortages of psychiatrists and other multidisciplinary team staff.
The committee has now called for quarterly progress reports on efforts to transfer the state patients from prisons to suitable health facilities. It also wants to see practical steps on reducing the growing backlog, saying that the 309 declared state patients awaiting placement was a huge increase from the 186 recorded in the 2019/20 financial year.
Ramolobeng added that keeping individuals – who had been declared mentally unfit – in correctional environments, often for periods longer than their sentences, undermined the spirit of the Constitutional Court’s De Vos judgment and the Mental Health Care Act.
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