Waiting to die of cancer
KWAZULU-NATAL: 499 PATIENTS DIED WAITING FOR THERAPY IN 12 MONTHS
Cancer services are under acute pressure following a decision to cut costs.
Mkhize, who died last year, ‘classic case of a patient who was failed by the system’.
Electrician Phiwankosi Mkhize was diagnosed with lung cancer in May last year and told by the hospital to come back for a scan in 15 months. But after just 12 months, he died before receiving treatment.
The 66-year-old Mkhize’s fate is far from unique in KwaZulu-Natal.
Hundreds of patients have died in the province over the past three years as cancer services come under acute pressure following a provincial decision to cut costs and stop recruiting or replacing doctors, say rights activists and doctors.
Days after Mkhize’s death on May 7, his daughter, Londiwe, said: “Patients who have cancer survive after going for chemotherapy, but for my dad it was too late.”
The SA Human Rights Commission says patients at government hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal wait between five months and a year to see an oncologist and another eight months for radiotherapy or chemotherapy.
Mkhize is “a classic case of a patient who was failed by the system”, said DA’s provincial shadow health MEC Dr Imran Keeka.
On social media, the plight of cancer sufferers is referred to as #KZNOncologyCrisis, but the problems are not isolated to the province.
Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi acknowledged this month that the national healthcare system in general was “very distressed”, as it battles a rise in cancer cases like in other countries, and a shortage of doctors.
“We are painfully aware of poor, or lack of management skills in most of our hospitals,” he said.
Motsoaledi announced funding of R100 million shared between hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng to buy and repair machines and employ staff to help clear a treatment backlog.
“We have helped them to hire private oncologists and the contract is for them to see 450 patients per month, and once the two machines start working, we will contract others to help them,” Motsoaledi said.
The development came too late for Mkhize, however.
In December, he had gone back to hospital in excruciating pain and been given morphine but told nothing more could be done for him and to go home as he only had a few days left to live, his daughter Londiwe said.
“He was crying like a baby, like anybody would do,” said the 28-year-old, sitting next to him on a visit to the provincial legislature in Pietermaritzburg to expose his plight to the lawmakers.
On that rainy March day, Mkhize, Londiwe, his son and a nephew travelled 235km from their village to the provincial seat, and sat in the public gallery as members of the provincial legislature discussed the cancer care problem.
About 499 patients in KwaZulu-Natal “died while waiting for radiotherapy and curative therapy” over a 12-month period between 2015 and 2016, according to Keeka, citing figures presented to parliament by the province.
The number excludes those who died at home or in palliative care facilities, he added.
Mvuyisi Mzukwa, head of the South African Medical Association in the province said: “The patients we send to hospitals don’t get attended to, the cancer advances and they die.”
Called for comment on the matter, the provincial government declined to comment.
Dr Keeka estimates that KwaZulu-Natal should have at least 16 oncologists. But the SA Medical Association and the DA say that, by last year, all but two oncologists in the province had resigned, largely due to frustration at not being able to save more lives, a lack of equipment, and an overload of patients.
Overall, South Africa has 38 radiation oncologists working in public hospitals, compared with 147 in the private sector, according to Raymond Abratt, chairperson of the SA Society of Clinical and Radiation Oncology.
Abratt said there was now no full-time oncologist at any public hospital in Durban and that the crunch in cancer care had been “a major problem for a couple of years”.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior doctor working at the Inkosi Albert Luthuli Hospital in Durban said government funding had dried up without warning.
Doctors “felt useless ... oncologists decided to resign because they were frustrated.
“The department is in shambles”, said Mzukwa. –