GAUTENG HEALTH IS IN CRISIS
Summary extract of Speech by Jack Bloom MPL in the Gauteng Health Budget debate on 8 July 2011
The Gauteng Health Department is in severe crisis. It has received a disclaimer from the Auditor-General for two years in a row. Key areas are a management disaster that threaten the lives of the people in this province.
We see it today with the power failures and long waiting lists for operations at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital. I warned about this earlier this year in this House, but nothing was done and patients suffer the consequences.
Madam MEC, you really must do something about the appalling emergency ambulance service. Only 39% of Priority One calls are responded to within 15 minutes in urban areas, when it should be at least 80 percent.
In rural areas, only 44% of P1 calls are responded to within 40 minutes, when it should be 100 percent. People die in this province because of slow ambulances. Another gross failure is maintenance and capital spending.
It is absolutely incredible that R855 million in the health facilities management budget was unspent last year even though our hospitals and clinics are falling apart.
We have lost out on R72.8 million from the Hospital Revitalisation Grant because Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan doesn't think we can spend it. You really need to get this right, or else more money will be left unspent at the end of this year.
There are lots of horror stories like sewerage overflowing at a parking lot at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, as well as outside the radiation room at the Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital. Equipment breaks down all the time. There is a constant crisis with CAT Scanners at virtually all our hospitals.
We are failing many cancer patients because CAT scan diagnosis takes too long. In this budget, the academic hospitals get a mere 1.3% increase, which is much less than general inflation never mind the higher medical inflation.
It's a fantasy to think that a National Health Insurance can be at all viable when public hospitals are so overwhelmed by problems that care is often inadequate and worse. We cannot continue to take so long to pay suppliers to hospitals as they are stopping vital goods and services.
We cannot continue with a 27% vacancy rate for doctors, a 41% vacancy rate for pharmacists and 17% of nurses posts that are unfilled. There really needs to be innovative thinking, particularly with regard to partnerships with the private health sector.
We really must make some progress on a health information system so that we know what things are costing us and where money would be best spent.
Computerisation is long overdue. It would cut queues as paper files would not get lost, and medical staff will spend more time on patients and less time on administration.
The desired changes need strong leadership from the top. Madam MEC, you need to attract and keep competent people. You also need to boot out some incompetents as well.
Focus on the basics and continue the turnaround started by your predecessor, Qedani Mahlangu. I sincerely hope that real progress will then be reported this time next year.
Statement issued by Jack Bloom MPL, DA Gauteng Health Spokesman, July 8 2011
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