DOCTORS working for the Eastern Cape department of health are going the legal route to force the provincial authority to pay them their January salaries. Despite assurances by health superintendent-general Siva Pillay, 16 junior doctors have not received a cent for their work in public hospitals across the province.

The Democratic Alliance notes, sadly with no suprise, the Provincial Treasury’s demands that the Department of Health (DoH) cuts its budgetary expenditure by over R200 million. Year on year, the DA has warned departmental officials that unless they immediately implement financial austerity measures, the department would find itself in the position it is today.

“The Democratic Alliances’s environmental affairs spokesman, John Cupido, said the metro had not been proactive in monitoring the population growth of the Gonubie informal settlement.” AROUND 1 200 shacks in Mzamomhle informal settlement have been built on environmentally sensitive sand dunes which form a buffer between the ocean and the sprawling Gonubie township. Residents of [...]

ADELEGATION of 40 government officials returned from Port Alfred yesterday after a three-day junket where they were pampered with massages, dined on four-star meals and treated to a boat cruise up the Kowie. Dubbed a leadership and management workshop fused with a Christmas party, the gathering at the coastal town was attended by 30 Eastern [...]

The Democratic Alliance urges all members of the community to be aware of the scourge of HIV/Aids and to take control of their own destinies. According to the Aids Prevalence Survey by the National Department of Health, almost a third (29, 9 %) of people in the Eastern Cape are infected with HIV.

A STAGGERING 19 tons of medication has been destroyed by the Eastern Cape Health Department over the past seven months. Estimated to be worth millions of rands, the medication had either been tampered with or left to expire at government depots, hospitals and clinics.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) welcomes the announcement by President Zuma that a railway link joining East London and Durban is set to be built. (Ambitious plan to link coastal cities, Daily Dispatch, November 21.) This is an initiative that I have been calling for in the Provincial Parliament for the last two years. A railway [...]

In the last six months the Eastern Cape Department of Health has destroyed almost 50 tons of medication, most of which is expired goods. Allowing vast amounts of medication to expire and go to ruin is the same as withholding treatment and is paramount to a human rights violation. Stock control policies need to be [...]

THE Eastern Cape department of health faces a massive R19-billion infrastructure and maintenance backlog that is slowly crippling service delivery in the province. The figure has reportedly ballooned over the past five years and the decline continues with the widespread neglect of already aging and failing public healthcare centres.