MEC pumps R10.5bn into health

A SUM of R10.5-billion has been set aside to help recruit desperately needed doctors, nurses and specialists for health centres across the province.

Butterworth is particularly short of medical staff.

“Without a capacitated workforce in health, our noble efforts of improving the health profile of the province will be undermined. We are allocating R10.479-billion in 2017-18 for health practitioners including doctors, nurses ad spec announced finance MEC Sakhumzi Somyo yesterday while tabling his 2017-18 budget speech.

Of the R74-billion provincial budget, R21.7-billion was earmarked for the health department.

Of this, Somyo said R1.4billion would be used to build a new hospital in Mjanyana, and upgrade two more hospitals as well as the Port Elizabethbased emergency medical services’ training centre.

The two hospitals which will benefit from April 1 are Cecilia Makiwane in Mdantsane and Tafalofefe in Kabakazi near Butterworth.

Somyo said Tafalofefe’s sanitation and water infrastructure would be refurbished.

He said the provincial government had been adversely affected by the legal claims filed against the health department.

The Dispatch reported in 2015 that medical negligence claims lodged against provincial hospitals by patients rocketed from R166-million in 2009 to R3.8-billion by 2014.

Claims at Dora Nginza in just three months in 2015 stood at R173-million.

“Honourable members, medico-legal claims against the department have remained one of the most significant contingent liabilities and this has unfortunately increased over the years.

“This is a concern against the tight fiscal envelope wherein resources are not utilised for service delivery due to these litigations,” he said.

In another significant announcement, the MEC said R43.2- million would be injected over the next three years into electronic document management, which included converting patient records into efiles and running community awareness programmes. —