Mystery hospital
AREPORT on healthcare in the Western Cape was presented to Parliament yesterday. Parts of it read like the script of a horror movie. Attacks on medics have increased and emergency response times have been affected because medics have to wait for a police escort, and because staff suffered from stress.
Nearly a third of complaints were about the type of care and treatment dished out to patients. The report also states that roughly a quarter of complaints were about the waiting times at health facilities.
There have been continual media reports about bad service and the long hours patients wait to be helped. MPs on a recent surprise visit to Khayelitsha Hospital witnessed this themselves.
These issues affect mostly the poor and marginalised – people who can’t afford private medical aid. The treatment they receive from the so-called best-run province betrays a lack of willingness by the Western Cape health authorities to arrest these problems once and for all. It makes a mockery of the provincial health department’s credo – “Better Together” – and begs the question whether there is proper political leadership.
AS WE report today, members of Parliament’s health portfolio had some tough questions to Health MEC Nomafrench Mbombo and her team. They heard her department’s plan to replace GF Jooste Hospital, which had served tens of thousands of poor people before it was shut down in 2014, and a new one promised. The facility had serviced the Manenberg, Gugulethu, Heideveld and Nyanga communities, among others.
Despite Cape Flats community leaders’ demands for information, the site of the new hospital remains shrouded in secrecy. In 2016 this paper reported how Manenberg residents feared certain schools in the area could be closed down or merged to make way for a replacement for GF Jooste.
Their concerns had merit, but citing that she wanted to avoid unnecessary objections, Mbombo refused to disclose the site’s location. Her excuse was as poor as some of the services rendered under her watch. With so much secrecy, the only reasonable deduction to be made is that something sinister is happening.
We challenge Mbombo and her team to be transparent and tell the people of the Cape Flats where the new hospital will be built. Members of the public have the right to know.