The latest adjustments budget, tabled in the Eastern Cape Legislature last week, made it clear that there is simply not enough money available to rescue the failing Department of Health that is factually bankrupt. Despite nearly a billion rand in additional funding, there is still a significant shortfall in what is needed to bring financial stability to the Department, which had accruals of close on R5 billion at the beginning …


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A year later and the Eastern Cape Department of Health has still not paid a service provider who supplied critical, life-saving implants for paediatric cardiology patients at the Provincial Hospital. When the Department doesn’t pay, it’s not just the suppliers and their employees who suffer. It is also the patients as companies become reluctant to provide further goods and services at the risk of incurring worse debt. Health MEC Nomakosazana …


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Of the 84 Emergency Medical Services (EMS) bases in the Eastern Cape, not one is compliant with EMS regulations in terms of personnel required at the base. These critical staff shortages mean that roughly 60% of the ambulances available can’t be used, as there are not enough staff to man them. People across the province, in a time of crisis, have had to wait for hours in the hopes that …


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Residents living in Nelson Mandela Bay have been unable to get any assistance from the Provincial Department of Health’s Emergency Medical Services, because the call centre has been offline. Imagine lying bleeding on the side of the road or being in labour and needing an ambulance, and your calls for help go unanswered. This is a shocking failure of government. The call centre, based at the head office at the …


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The provincial government needs to put firm plans in place to take Eastern Cape hospitals off the grid. The ongoing rolling blackouts across the country are deepening the crises at hospitals, which are struggling to keep lifesaving equipment running during power outages. Cash-strapped hospitals, already battling to pay suppliers for basics such as food and laundry services, not to mention lifesaving equipment and oxygen, are now having to divert millions …


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Yesterday the ANC made it clear that they do not want the people of the Eastern Cape to have access to emergency medical services, shooting down a motion tabled in the Legislature to address the crippling state of emergency services in the province. The motion, tabled by the DA, called for the outsourcing of repairs and maintenance of ambulances, to speed up ambulance turnaround times and improve service delivery. It …


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The condition of the once world-class Uitenhage Provincial Hospital has deteriorated to such an extent that it is unfathomable that the Department of Health considers the facility acceptable for patient care. Oversight of the hospital this week revealed passages filled with medical waste, dirty linen shoved in random storerooms and patient toilet doors sealed with tape, as the toilets remain out of order. The now infamous main elevators of the …


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Critically ill patients fight for their lives, and some die, while waiting for an ambulance that takes hours to arrive, if at all. This is not only traumatic for them but for their loved ones. The sad reality is that the Eastern Cape’s Emergency Medical Service (EMS) is collapsing. Ambulance response times run into hours, not minutes, and that’s if they come at all because the centralised emergency call centre …


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Tourism and the associated jobs are under siege in this province, because the Department of Environmental Affairs is spending too much money on consultants, and not enough on environmental protection. There’s not even enough money for law enforcement officers to drive the length and breadth of this province to protect the environment and save us from poachers. The MEC for DEDEAT, Mlungisi Mvoko, must immediately ring fence funding currently spent …


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Patients have been irrevocably maimed, their limbs amputated, and lives forever changed, because of Health MEC Nomakhosazana Meth’s failure to implement a directive from the Provincial Legislature to pay suppliers of critical medical equipment at Livingstone Hospital. The Democratic Alliance has been informed that at least three people needed their limbs amputated due to complications from postponed surgeries requiring critical medical equipment. We will write to the Minister of Health, …


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