Eastern Cape MPLs who conducted oversight visits to hospitals and clinics recently slammed conditions and services, with the DA repeating its previous calls for Health Hinister Dr Joe Phaahla to place the provincial department under administration.
The MPs listed a litany of issues, from nurse shortages and lack of generators to crippled emergency medical services, as well as failure to control mentally challenged patients, which posed a serious threat to other patients and staff.
Additionally, the accommodation of a large group of municipal staff in a hospital because the town hall had been burned down – and never rebuilt – added to overcrowded conditions, they said.
DA MPL and Health Portfolio member Jane Cowley said the department was in crisis, reports Daily Dispatch.
“It has collapsed and without immediate intervention, will not recover,” she said, adding that Premier Oscar Mabuyane and his executive repeatedly denied there was a problem, “but people are dying, unable to get the care they desperately need”.
The DA urged Phaahla to immediately place the department under administration until minimum standards could be met.
Disaster, money owed everywhere
Cowley said the oversight visits had revealed just critical the situation was, and that “the financial disaster continues to get worse”.
She said year-on-year accruals were mounting and suppliers still not being paid.
There was also a glaring lack of professional HR management, with directors and managers creating, freezing or closing posts arbitrarily to cater for cadres, with no regard for how those decisions affected patients.
“Staff vacancies in most hospitals hover at above 50%, while some are even higher,” she said.
“Critical nurse shortages will result in further medico-legal claims against the department as nurses buckle under huge patient loads; sometimes up to 36 patients per professional nurse.”
Additionally, facilities were in a shocking condition.
“Many should be condemned, while others are far too small to cater for the relevant needs… many hospitals still do not have generators.”
Emergency Medical Services in the region are totally crippled – with less than than one-third of the required number of ambulances being functional – and so short-staffed that operational ambulances cannot all be manned.
Mobile clinic numbers had dropped from 253 in 2017 “to a mere 148 this year, while our rural populations have grown considerably”.
Cowley said corruption in supply chain, overtime, and rural stipend management was so rife the department was bleeding millions a year.
EFF MPL and Health Portfolio Committee member Simthembile Madikizela described the sector as being “really in deep crisis”.
“One of the biggest challenges is dilapidated infrastructure,” he said. “Some hospitals and clinics were last attended to back in the early 90s.”
Madikizela said conditions at Komani Psychiatric Hospital were also shocking – where mentally challenged patients were mingling freely with other patients and staff.
And officials were dumbfounded when they established that the Enoch Mgijima municipality staff had been working from a local hospital after municipal offices were gutted by fire in 2022.
Municipal spokesperson Lonwabo Kowa confirmed staff from the mayor’s and municipal manager’s office, as well as from the corporate services department, had been accommodated at the hospital for more than a year.
He said the municipal building that had caught fire had not been fixed yet “due to financial implications”.
“The whole building was burnt down and must be built from scratch,” he said.
“It was insured, but the insurer and the municipality have not reached an agreement about the amount that must be paid. The arrangment is for the municipality to occupy the hospital offices until the town hall is rebuilt.”
News24 reports that Phaahla has promised to help the cash-strapped Eastern Cape Health Department, described by outgoing ombudsman Professor Malegapuru Makgoba as “an embarrassment”.
Phaahla was at Cecilia Makiwane Hospital in Mdantsane, East London, last week for a meeting with Health MEC Nomakhosazana Meth and other officials to discuss the state of the ailing department.
He said although there were “several financial challenges” and a huge debt backlog from previous years, none of this was “insurmountable”.
In February, the department was granted a reprieve after Judge Robert Griffiths in the Eastern Cape High Court (Bhisho) ruled it no longer had to make upfront lump sum payments in medical negligence claims.
The department had approached the court after a R35m lawsuit that was instituted by parents whose baby developed cerebral palsy from alleged negligence by Cecilia Makiwane Hospital staff in 2018.
By March, it was reported that the province had medico-legal claims to the tune of R40bn.
Phaahla said apart from the department’s massive litigation costs, attracting specialist services was also a major issue, particularly for rural areas.
“These are the areas where we will work from a national level, supporting the province and ensuring further improvements. We will take the discussion further to look at the possibilities of reorganising on the financial side, tapping into some of the grants available at national level,” he said.
He added that there would be some challenges relating to consumables and “some of those areas where we don’t have earmarked funds, as they come from equitable share”.
“But we will work with them … in repurposing and reorganising the financial situation," he said.
Health Department spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo said the department “is not at liberty to comment on the findings until reports are tabled before the legislature”.
News24 – 'We will work from a national level': Health minister vows to support ailing Eastern Cape health dept
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DA calls for Eastern Cape Health to be placed under administration
MTN cuts services to Eastern Cape Health, Afrox threatens to suspend
Eastern Cape hospitals flounder under surgical backlogs and massive debts
Psychiatric patients overload Eastern Cape health services
State takes over administration of Eastern Cape mental health