Gauteng Health in financial meltdown

30 October 2017

I am greatly concerned that the Gauteng Health Department is in a financial meltdown that is severely affecting patient care because unpaid companies are ceasing goods and services.

Two hospitals are currently in crisis because of unpaid bills:

- Rahima Moosa Hospital is struggling without agency nurses because the company has not been paid;

- Services at the Thelle Mogoerane Hospital have been disrupted because the security company was not paid.

Some patients have been told that surgery is delayed because an unpaid supplier is not supplying an essential item.

The Department is currently owing more than R1.3 billion to companies, some of them for more than a year.

I also know of small companies going out of business because of late payments.

Patients lives will be put at risk if the Department's budget crisis is not solved soon, otherwise we will have another Esidimeni.

The provincial government will somehow have to find the extra money and insist that the Department's deep-rooted management problems are fixed, otherwise its financial crises will continue to recur.

Issued by Jack Bloom, DA Gauteng Shadow Health MEC, 30 October 2017