Expert team to help EC improve Covid-19 response
Our province’s fight against the coronavirus is showing signs of stability.We are buoyed by numbers of people who have recovered which currently sits at 44,807 of the 65,316 confirmed cases. This represents a 72.4% recovery rate.
While we are fighting the virus to save the lives of our people, we are also moving with speed to address administrative, resource and clinical challenges faced by our hospitals and health care system.
These challenges were reported by the people of our province and exposed by workers at our hospitals through their unions.
I took a decision to address service delivery, administrative, infrastructure and clinical problems in some of our hospitals and in the provincial department of health to improve our response to Covid-19.
In line with the intergovernmental relations framework, I requested a support team of experts from health minister Dr Zweli Mkhize to assist the provincial department with strategies and the implementation of guidelines to effectively respond to the pandemic.
The support team, which was led by Dr Sibongile Zungu, included Professor Ian Sanne, Theo Lighthelm, Albert Jansen, Dr Dorman Chimhamhiwa and Wendy Ovens, conducted assessment of the provincial health department’s systems, administrative processes and clinical response capabilities to the coronavirus at some hospitals in the Nelson Mandela Bay and Buffalo City metros.
The assessment was conducted from June 29 to July 10.
The support team found that while the metros have mobilised reasonable infrastructure to meet the surge, the scale up requires attention to the service delivery requirements such as the adequate provision of oxygen, equipment, human resources, medicines, and that procurement delays are hampering the surge capacity commitments.
They recommended that as a province we must address inadequate co-ordination between tertiary, regional and district hospitals through the revised command and control structure; problems at Dora Nginza Hospital in NMBM which is being overwhelmed by patient demand; and lack of infrastructure, equipment and human resources to meet the clinical care demand.
The support team also noted labour relations as one of the overwhelming issues in the department that requires a dedicated action plan; that historic arrangements for drainage areas, resource allocation, and referral routing are not addressing the significant surge in patient numbers, particularly in vulnerable populations.
The report also notes that the Emergency Medical Services and patient transport services require intervention to ensure continued function.
In addition, the support team expressed concern that all oxygen separation plants are located in NMBM and hence it takes far too long to supply or replenish hospitals in far flung areas.
After receiving and accepting the report, I instructed that a Project Management Unit (PMU) be established with authority to fast-track actions to address each of the findings raised by the support team, as well as issues highlighted by various communities and the media.
The PMU is tasked with strengthening effective scientific-based interventions to reduce the transmission of person-to-person Covid-19, maintenance of low levels of community transmission and to mitigate and protect the functioning of our provincial health care system.
I appointed Dr Zungu to head the PMU and her responsibilities will be to lead the rapid response team co-ordination focusing on the operational needs of the region to suppress and contain the spread of Covid-19.
She will work closely with the tracking, tracing and testing teams, hospital support teams, and regional coordinators to ensure that these interventions are strengthened.
Zungu will provide technical and clinical support for case management of hospitalised patients including the availability of oxygen, clinical protocols for patient management and rational use of ICU beds.
I also appointed Dr Monde Tom, a skilled, reputable and result-driven turnaround specialist to streamline and create a seamless shared service of finance, human resources, supply chain, infrastructure and information system.
Tom will design [and] drive an integrated organisationwide intelligence and information system that supports the decision-making process, resource allocation, operational efficiency, effective interventions and impact of health systems to improve the health status of the people of our province.
The third member of the PMU is Laurence Van Zuydam, a skilled, and experienced human resource management specialist who is currently employed as the head of Transversal Human Resource Management at the Office of the Premier.
Van Zuydam will redesign the organisational structure, functions and critical process of the department to create a central governance structure for rapid decision making, and to reorganise the teams into work streams made up of a variety of knowledge skills and competencies across functional units of the department.
The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the glaring historical and systematic challenges that the department has been going through since the amalgamation of two former homelands and former republic’s health systems.
The assessment helped us to get to the root cause of the problems.
Calls for implementation of section 100 are misplaced because we continue supporting infected people to recover and improve provision of health care in many areas.
Through the PMU we will fundamentally transform the department to improve its efficiency and effectiveness in delivering services to our people as demanded by our constitution.
The support team found that while the metros have mobilised reasonable infrastructure to meet the surge, the scale up requires attention to the service delivery requirements