Report reveals Eastern Cape’s health failings

CAPE TOWN — Health activists yesterday launched a campaign to turn up the political pressure on Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi and Eastern Cape health MEC Sicelo Gqobana, hoping their exposé of the hardship borne by patients will spur action.

Public health services in the Eastern Cape are among the worst in the country, and have virtually collapsed in some parts of the province.

Last year the Eastern Cape’s then head of health, Siva Pillay, told Parliament that “not a single building” would pass the new min- imum standards set by the health department. Research published by the South African Institute for Race Relations this year showed the province had a 48% vacancy rate for doctors and a 67% vacancy rate for nurses in 2010.

In February, MPs were told that the province’s pilot district for National Health Insurance, OR Tambo, had barely spent any of its budget for the financial year ending March 31.

A new report released yesterday by lobby groups Section 27 and the Treatment Action Campaign highlights the personal tragedies of patients failed by the Eastern Cape’s public health system, drawing attention to the dis- array at many of the province’s hospitals and clinics.

Titled Death and Dying in the Eastern Cape, the report’s graphic descriptions of the humiliation and distress facing patients is intended to trigger political action, said Section 27 executive director Mark Heywood.

“We have deliberately not gone for numbers, because there is a mountain of data about the crisis in the Eastern Cape that has not moved government or civil society to act,” he said.

“Data seems to breed a complacent response. This report is intended to mobilise outrage. We want the national minister and province to come up with a plan that deals with the immediate crisis and the systemic issues.

“There needs to be a full audit and proper investigation into corruption. We want to see the people who have stolen massive resources sacked. They should be in prison.”

Among the report’s case studies is the story of Lindeka Gxala, a woman who spent an agonising night in Nelson Mandela Hospital in Mthatha waiting for her sevenmonth-old stillborn baby to be delivered. She was forced to share a bed with a stranger, given no pain relief, and had to search in the darkness for a nurse when her labour became obstructed.

When she was eventually admitted to the operating theatre, the procedure to remove her dead baby was done without anaesthetic. “The pain was terrible. They eventually gave me something for the pain, but I had felt everything. I cried the whole time,” she said.

Parts of the original report were redacted at the eleventh hour at the request of Dr Motsoaledi, who asked that detailed patient records be removed to protect the confidentiality of these and other patients, said Mr Heywood. Another section of the report was removed at the request of a doctor, he said.

The health minister’s spokesman, Joe Maila, said Dr Motsoaledi was “very concerned” about the conditions highlighted by the report. He had dispatched a five person team to the Eastern Cape on Monday to investigate the facilities identified in the report, said Mr Maila.

“People must be held accountable,” said Mr Maila. He said several initiatives that sought to improve the public health system, including that of the Eastern Cape were already underway.

The Eastern Cape was ranked worst in the Presidency’s latest management performance assessment of the provinces, which was released yesterday.