The Gauteng Government and national MPs have not ruled out arson as a possible reason for the fires at Tembisa Provincial Tertiary Hospital, which is central to several fraud and corruption investigations, and has called for the State Security Agency to investigate, notes MedicalBrief.
The two separate fires have also raised concern about the hospital’s safety protocols and emergency preparedness, with MPs last week discovering – during an oversight visit – that the facility was only 79% compliant with Occupational Health and Safety prescripts.
Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi said there had “been lots of wrong things happening, so we just have to make sure there is no human element to it”.
Dr Sibongiseni Dlomo, chairperson of the national Portfolio Committee on Health, said while the committee did not want to pre-empting the outcome of the investigation, the starting of the fire in one of the busiest sections of the hospital creates a legitimate suspicion on the one hand, and the unlinkage of the second fire to the first one equally creates suspicion on the other hand".
The committee urged law enforcement agencies to expedite the investigation into the fires following its oversight visit to the hospital.
Dhlomo said the investigation must be expedited to ensure accountability and to guide preventative measures.
The first fire – last Saturday in the accident and emergency unit where 81 patients were being treated – completely disrupted services, reports Sowetan LIVE.
A second fire on Wednesday, this one in the outpatients’ department and affecting the records room, created even more havoc, although it was contained within an hour. The adjacent pharmacy and eye clinic areas were also affected by smoke.
Meanwhile, the portfolio committee noted that the hospital was at 79% compliance with Occupational Health and Safety prescripts before the fire.
SABC News reports that the Office of Health Standards Compliance (OHSC) said it would would be sending inspectors to probe the cause of the fire incidents at the hospital.
OHSC’s chief operations officer, Mathabo Mathebula, said there was an urgent need for a comprehensive assessment of the facility to ensure the safety of everyone who makes use of the facility.
“The office of health standard complaints will be dispatching a team of inspectors to conduct a risk-based inspection as a fact-finding and action to establish the circumstances surrounding the fire incidents. Considering that the winter season is on, this inspection will enable the OHSC to establish possible root causes and to make informed recommendations that are made to mitigate the risks of fire incidents.”
The portfolio committee welcomed the intention of the Gauteng Department of Health to take over the function of infrastructure development and maintenance from the national Department of Public Works a& Infrastructure as a way of cost containment and to accelerate the implementation of projects.
In a statement, the committe also cautioned against the "decision of delegating an unfunded responsibility of the provision of tertiary services to the Tembisa Hospital without capacitating and positioning the hospital for that responsibility. A tertiary facility should ordinarily have a sound capacity, and appropriately resourced to cope with advanced treatment demands".
The committee also welcomed contingency plans put in place by the hospital to continue on a sustainable basis the provision of healthcare services from its sections where infrastructure was completely destroyed by fire.
Meanwhile, an employee had described the situation after the fire as “chaotic”. She said staff returned to a “messy place” after the fires, having to redirect patients to a makeshift casualty department with only two working computers after 10 others were destroyed in the initial blaze. She said they battled to find patients’ files.
“And it was chaotic. Patients did not know where to go, including the staff themselves.”
Another nurse said patients were confused at being sent from one part of the hospital to another as departments were moved.
“We cannot work efficiently… it’s frustrating. Psychologically and emotionally, we’re not ok,” she added. “We have a shortage of staff, so nurses were burnt out anyway. Our psychological and emotional states were questionable already because of that. And now the trauma of the fire …”
In 2021, a fire had ravaged parts of Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital, and again in 2022, another fire broke out in an unused parking area at the facility.
Gauteng Secretary of the Democratic Nursing Organisation of SA Bongani Mazibuko wondered whether the Health Department had learnt any lessons from Charlotte Maxeke, “especially considering that the accident and emergency unit (at Tembisa) was recently renovated”.
“We don’t want to speculate, but we are wondering how the fire could have spread so rapidly to the point of destroying the whole A&E unit,” Mazibuko said.
The Public Servants Association told Sowetan LIVE the hospital has been on the brink of collapse for months, with internal reports highlighting cracked walls, broken taps, exposed live wires, and serious fire hazards, especially in high-risk areas like the casualty department.
Hospital records
Deputy Minister of Health Joe Phaahla said documents necessary for numerous ongoing fraud and corruption investigations were not affected by the blaze in the records room – that only patient records were affected.
“This was not the admin (room). Information which could be related to investigations would be more admin. These are related to (outpatient) clinic records.”
Acting hospital CEO Dr Rianna Louw confirmed to News24 that the documents in the burnt building were mostly digitised patient records.
Louw took over as CEO from Ashley Mthunzi, who was flagged during the Babita Deokaran investigation.
In its expose, News24 reported that Mthunzi was appointed as hospital boss despite critical red flags on his own declaration form, and that the provincial health department had ignored their own rules to ensure he got the job.
In April 2021, he became a key actor in a contract extortion scheme first exposed by slain whistleblower Deokaran, signing dodgy medical supply contracts with grossly inflated prices and based on forged documents.
Mthunzi died a year ago while on suspension and undergoing a disciplinary inquiry on 13 charges of misconduct, lasting for nearly two years.
The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) has been probing dubious Tembisa Hospital contracts, in parallel with a Hawks fraud and corruption investigation.
Phaahla said the two fires did not appear to be linked.
On Wednesday evening, forensic teams were still investigating. Louw said there was no CCTV footage of the area where the fire started, only distant footage from a nearby ward.
The forensic teams also catalogued lost equipment so the hospital can procure replacements.
When questioned about the possibility of additional tender corruption in sourcing the new equipment, Phaahla said because people manage the procurement processes, the system could still be exploited.
However, he said the assistance of the SIU and financial audit committees should act as a deterrent to tender fraud.
“We have procurement regulations but acknowledge that they sometimes get abused.”
Phaahla gave no timelines or expected costs for repairing the records room or the other wards damaged by the fire but said there would be more updates.
Swift and corruption-free
The DA in Gauteng has urged the Department to rebuild the fire-damaged sections “with speed and cost-effectiveness, and zero tolerance for corruption”.
In a statement in PoliticsWeb, the party’s Jack Bloom wrote that relocating affected patients to other parts of the hospital had worsened the already severe overcrowding.
He said under no circumstances should the dysfunctional Gauteng Department of Infrastructure Development (GDID) be involved in the rebuilding project, that it was notorious for non-performing contracts such as occurred at Charlotte Maxeke, where fire repairs had to be taken over by the National Health Department and the Development Bank of South Africa (DBSA).
He called for a competent project team to be appointed that would work with the private sector to expedite the building work.
The DA would scrutinise the process closely to ensure that money was spent effectively and efficiently to benefit patients in the shortest time, he said.
Health MEC Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko and Head of Department Lesiba Malotana have a dismal track record in preventing corruption and inefficiency, he wrote.
SowetanLIVE article – Spooks asked to probe Tembisa hospital fire (Restricted access)
SABC News – OHSC to investigate Tembisa Hospital fires amid safety concerns
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Arson suspicion in second Charlotte Maxeke fire reignites concerns about its future
Two fires in three days at Tembisa Hospital
Deafening silence on Tembisa Hospital payments scandal – Jack Bloom