Rural communities can no longer suffer due to a lack of access to ambulances
A report published last week by the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) highlighted the critical shortcomings in the delivery of emergency services in the Eastern Cape. The former Transkei region of the province, for example, has only 28 ambulances assigned to 1.3 million people. This means that residents often have a minimal chance of receiving an ambulance in times of need.
Desperate patients, especially those in rural areas, are being unnecessarily exposed to suffering, and possible death, due to the lack of ambulances and emergency services.
I will be writing a letter to the Minister of Health, Aaron Motsoaledi, urgently requesting that he address the Emergency Medical Service (EMS) policy gaps. I will ask him to focus on the adequacy and application of the National Core Standards in the Eastern Cape, especially with regard to ambulance services.
Without clarity on these issues, the apportionment of ambulances will be left solely to the discretion of the province, making it difficult to exact accountability. This also increases the chance of the demand for ambulances far exceeding the supply in the rural areas.
The DA commends the SAHRC for its work in investigating this complex and tragic state of affairs in the Eastern Cape. While it supports the recommendations made by the report, we would also call for these additional two action steps:
- In addition to the submission of a detailed plan from the Eastern Cape’s department of health, the National Department of Health should submit a detailed response to the findings of the Commission from a national level within six months. This should include how it intends to address gaps in the policy framework that the report identified;
- A detailed investigation should be conducted by National Treasury and the Auditor-General, with regard to any irregular or fruitless expenditure of public money allocated to EMS programmes by the Eastern Cape’s Health Department.
Furthermore, I will be writing to the Chairperson of the Standing Committee on Appropriations to request that the Health Department give an account to Parliament as to why there has been an under-spending on EMS, especially as it impacts on the allotment of ambulances to rural areas.
The poor performance in the Eastern Cape contrasts sharply with that in the DA-led Western Cape, where the response times for Priority 1 call-outs is substantially higher.
As indicated in a response to written questions I submitted to the Minister of Health earlier this year, the response times of most Western Cape health districts to Priority 1 call-outs fell, in 75 percent to 100 percent of cases, within the 15-minute target for urban areas and 40 minutes for rural areas for Emergency Services reaching high priority cases.
Additionally, the Western Cape Government recently spent R256 million on a five-year ICT project that will speed up ambulance response times to the point where 90% of all incidents in urban areas are responded to within 15 minutes and 40 minutes in rural areas.
This new system has integrated all aspects of EMS such as calls, fleet management and patient records which all contributes to quick dispatching of emergency resources to incidents.
The DA will continue to fight for access of all citizens to emergency services because we value the lives of all South Africans. We cannot allow our citizens, including those in remote areas, to continue to suffer. The right to life is enshrined in our Constitution and we will be unswerving in our fight to preserve this right.
Issued by Heinrich Volmink, DA Deputy Shadow Minister of Health, 5 October 2015
