Healthcare is in ICU
HARD on the heels of Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi’s angry denial that the country’s health system is on the verge of collapse comes the news that this province has failed to spend millions meant for service delivery.
Gauteng, which draws hundreds of thousands of new migrants every year, experiences massive stress on resources at its health facilities, yet the province has under-spent on its budget for badly needed services. According to a fourth-quarter report, covering the January to March 2018 period, it had a capital assets budget of R2.1 billion, but only R1.5bn had been spent. This despite healthcare facilities across the province having damaged lifts, ramshackle machinery and broken air conditioning.
This is but an epitome of the state of healthcare in general in South Africa, which Health Ombud Malegapuru Makgoba has described as being on the verge of collapse.
The furious denial by Motsoaledi that our health system is in serious crisis is difficult to believe when horror stories about our public healthcare continue to dominate news headlines.
Makgoba, credited with producing an excellent report on the Life Esidimeni tragedy, has cited the KwaZulu-Natal oncology crisis and the “potential Life Esidimeni” disaster in the Eastern Cape as proof that the system is facing its most critical challenge to date. Motsoaledi, who is one of the most competent and hard-working cabinet ministers, has denied the claims. While admitting the system was “very distressed and going through very hard times”, he said everything was under control. We would have expected Motsoaledi to give us more assurance that our hospitals are doing what they are supposed to do – save lives.
It is difficult to believe that the situation is under control when employees at Charlotte Maxeke Hospital decided to trash wards over unpaid bonuses. The cancer crisis facing KwaZuluNatal hospitals caused by the failure to repair life-saving machines, and the exodus of soughtafter oncologists, paints a picture of an institution struggling to cope.
The Life Esidimeni tragedy is perhaps the biggest failing of the democratic government, and if this had happened anywhere in the world it would have been labelled a disaster. We want to appeal to Motsoaledi to be realistic and admit that our healthcare system is not what it’s supposed to be. Denying it is not going to make the problems go away. It is difficult to understand the government’s insistence in going ahead with the implementation of the National Health Insurance when we are struggling to cope with basic healthcare.