Concern over food shortages, infant deaths at Bara

GAUTENG Health MEC Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko has addressed foodshortage reports at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital.

The latest report of food shortages comes a year after a similar incident was reported in March last year.

Yesterday, the MEC went on a site visit to the Soweto-based health facility in a bid to familiarise herself with issues that were affecting the hospital.

This comes after media reports that the country’s biggest hospital was once again embroiled in a food-shortage scandal owing to the non-payment of suppliers, which was said to be affecting the health and well-being of patients.

According to the online newspaper Daily Maverick, a health worker, who did not want to be named, said the long-standing problem had now reached crisis point as companies were refusing to deliver food because of non-payment.

The acting CFO at the hospital, Masibolekwe Ndima, said the department was working around the clock to ensure that suppliers were paid on time, adding that some contractors failed to properly invoice for services rendered, which hindered payment schedules.

This comes as the hospital was accused of not paying contractors on time and owing more than R4 billion to service providers.

“We’ve had supply chain challenges. We’ve also picked up issues around the performance (of) our contractors. This is why we have now been doing a number of reviews on these issues.

“For the longest time, it has been difficult to understand the non-performance of certain service providers, but we are now doing our budget monthly.

Whether the budget item is over or under R5million, we will manage it.

“If it is under, we want to know what are the reasons of you not spending this monthly budget, and if it is over R5m, we want to know why, so that at the end we ensure we do not get to a point where funds get taken away from the hospital or we deplete our budget,” Ndima said.

In March last year, charity organisations stepped in to donate food to the hospital after doctors took it upon themselves to purchase food supplies.

The hospital receives an annual budget of about R3bn, more than what some provincial health departments receive.

The MEC said the problem was due in part to issues of supply chain and outstanding contractual obligation as well as end-of-financial year challenges.

She said the department would be tightening its supply chain challenges to ensure that some of the issues were well managed.

“We are well on course in terms of this commitment to make sure that we realign our finance and supply chain components to ensure that issues of supplier payments and lack of delivery of supplies by contracted service providers are dealt with,” Nkomo-Ralehoko said.

The food shortage crisis at the hospital comes a day after the DA expressed its shock over the 1 565 neonatal deaths at the hospital over the past three years.

DA Gauteng spokesperson on health, Jack Bloom, said there were at least 909 possible avoidable factors in connection with the recorded deaths at the facility.

Of these, 589 cases were due to inadequate infection control, 211 involved the limited number of neonatal ICU beds and 70 were due to delays in case management/underestimating the seriousness of the case, and there were 39 cases of hypothermia, he said.

“I’m also concerned that 1443 babies were born with intrapartum hypoxia (lack of oxygen during delivery), and 997 with various stages of encephalopathy (brain injury). More than 579, or 58%, were of children with mild encephalopathy, while at least 300 (30%) were children with moderate encephalopathy and (in) 118 cases (12%) children suffered severe encephalopathy,“he said.

Responding to Bloom, acting head of department, Lesiba Malotana, denied that these cases were avoidable, saying each case had its own challenges.

“I don’t think it is accurate to say that all these neonatal deaths could have been avoided. Every single case of these deaths is in itself a special case, with an investigation that goes into it.

“Therefore, to say they could have been avoidable is not accurate,” Malotana said.