Gauteng Health MEC can't give accurate cancer figures

21 August 2018

I am hugely concerned that Gauteng Health MEC Gwen Ramokgopa is unable to give accurate figures on the waiting lists and waiting times for cancer patients at the Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg and Steve Biko hospitals.

She admitted this in an oral reply to my questions today in the Gauteng Legislature.

She said that she could not give “figures of integrity” as the waiting figures for cancer treatment varied on a day to day basis and sometimes patients on the list had received treatment elsewhere. However, urgent cases were attended to.

Unverified figures for Steve Biko Hospital are as follows:

Chemotherapy - 4 weeks for first visit and two weeks for treatment

Radiation - 4 weeks for first visit and 2 - 7 weeks for treatment

Ramokgopa gave no figures for Charlotte Maxeke, but earlier this year the hospital’s CEO, Gladys Bogoshi, said that there were about 300 prostate cancer patients who would wait two years for treatment. She also said that waiting time for 50 breast cancer patients was four to six months, and 150 patients for gynecological and other cancers would wait three to four months.

It is unacceptable that correct figures for cancer patients are not currently available.

How are speedy interventions to be made to ensure timely treatment if there is no proper datebase?

Ramokgopa said that the Department was working on an electronic data base so that accurate statistics can be given in future, including movement of patients from one treatment centre to another.

Electronic patient records should have been in place long ago, but the Department is still haunted by the disastrous period of corruption under former Health MEC Brian Hlongwa.

Issued by Jack Bloom, DA Gauteng Shadow Health MEC, 21 August 2018