Limpopo seriously short of health specialists – MEC

HOSPITALS in Limpopo are operating without the specialists needed to enable proper health-care services.

The Limpopo MEC for Health, Phophi Ramathuba, was among four provincial MECs to brief Parliament’s portfolio committee on health and hospital services in their areas.

The others were KwaZulu-Natal, the Free State and Northern Cape.

Regional hospitals are expected to have a minimum of three specialists each, with five being preferred.

Ramathuba said most of Limpopo’s health facilities functioned without specialists, or had fewer in comparison with other provinces.

“We don’t have a single hospital in the province that can show you that they have five or even three specialists. We try to go down and look into other provinces.

“If people are one day to be sick and require a specialist, they’ll wish they were born in the Western Cape,” she said.

She said between Limpopo and Mpumalanga, there were fewer psychiatric specialists than in one hospital in the Western Cape.

Ramathuba decried the lack of academic and central hospitals in the province, something that she said would help alleviate many of the challenges faced by the Limpopo health sector.

“We need an academic hospital; these hospitals attract specialists.”

The committee heard that the Northern Cape Health Department was also struggling to fill specialist posts. Provincial medical director Dion Thys said they had 30 specialists – 27 based at Kimberley Hospital.

Thys said they lacked key specialists such as cardiologists but were able to provide appropriate cancer services as they had two oncologists, two radiologists and one paediatric oncologist.

“The services are there, there are experienced medical officers in the unit, babies are born, operations are done but we lack a lead person in the department,” Thys said.