Regular health-care services set to resume

THE province is experiencing a steady decline in Covid-19 hospital admissions, thus prompting the resumption of regular health services at hospitals and clinics.

Spokesperson Mark van der Heever said that while services must remain geared to deal with the pandemic and a potential second wave of infections, the provincial Health Department would scale-up essential services in a balanced manner.

“The department’s risk-and-impact-based approach is guiding the services to be reintroduced, identifying those services which have low risk yet high impact such as immunisation services,” he said.

“These services, which had reduced significantly during the pandemic, will have a significant long-term impact for those clients who had missed immunisations, follow-up appointments and scheduled non-emergency treatment.”

Chronic disease management such as diabetes and hypertension, HIV and TB management will be scaled-up systematically, Van der Heever added, along with elective surgeries at several hospitals.

“A major by-product of the lockdown period was the de-congesting of the health service platform. While some non-emergency services were scaled down, alternative innovative measures such as increased home deliveries of chronic medication took preference, ensuring these patients continued to receive their medication,” he said.

“This development has been positively experienced by many patients, and is one of the positive innovations the department wishes to sustain and expand going forward.”

Premier Alan Winde added: “Since the beginning of August, we have been focused on ramping-up other healthcare services in a risk-adjusted way, and focusing on those health-care services with the most impact.”

He said that as of last week, only 12% of all hospital admissions in the province were Covid-19-related and this week the Western Cape reported less than 1 000 hospitalisations.