Deaths increase as Helen Joseph Hospital struggles with overcrowding and 148 staff vacancies
30 September 2021
Deaths and serious adverse events have increased at the Helen Joseph Hospital’s emergency department as they battle with a flood of extra patients from the fire-damaged Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Hospital despite having 148 staff vacancies.
This is revealed by Gauteng Health MEC Nomathemba Mokgethi in a written reply to my questions in the Gauteng Legislature.
According to Mokgethi, the emergency department has been severely affected as follows:
overcrowding as a result of bed shortages in
wards and especially the Intensive Care Unit.
overload of staff and equipment.
the Resuscitation area often holds double the intended patients, with associated lack of vents/monitors and staff to monitor all patients.
oxygen has been a challenge especially over the Covid-19 epidemic.
staff burnout.
increased deaths and Serious Adverse Events as they do not have not have the staff to see all patients.
increased complaints due to the huge strain on doctors who may get short-tempered with patients and relatives who are aggressive and rude.
Another major problem is that the number of psychiatric patients is more than four times what they can handle, with many incidents of abuse to staff including the stabbing of a security guard and attempted hanging of a patient in a small cubicle!
The hospital’s 148 staff vacancies include 125 nurses, and 8 vacancies in the hard-pressed emergency unit.
There are 2206 funded posts in total, but the hospital should really have 943 more posts to perform its upgraded functions as a Tertiary Hospital. A proposed organogram for these posts was submitted in January 2013 but was never implemented.
I am greatly concerned at the Gauteng Health Department’s neglect of this hospital by starving it of the funds and staff needed to provide a proper health service for patients.
The most visible strain is in the emergency department where medical negligence has soared and lives are lost because of gross overcrowding.
Meanwhile, R500 million has been wasted on refurbishing the Anglo Ashanti Hospital in the far west rand, which the Special Investigating Unit has found was spent irregularly. This money should have gone to existing hospitals like Helen Joseph which are struggling with extra patients due to Covid-19 and the partial closure of the Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Hospital.
The DA will push for better health spending in areas of greatest need to alleviate suffering, rather than corrupt projects that waste money.
Issued by Jack Bloom, DA Gauteng Shadow Health MEC, 30 September 2021
