News24 reports that the Democratic Alliance (DA) in Gauteng says that while 103 extra staff posts were approved at Tembisa Hospital a year ago, there are no funds to fill them.
In a statement on Sunday, the party's provincial health spokesperson Jack Bloom said he had uncovered this during an unannounced visit to the hospital last Friday. Bloom said staff at the hospital's Ward 5 neonatal ICU unit informed him that only 19 staff members were working at the unit, while 40 were needed to operate it. Ten babies died at the hospital's unit between November and December last year, due to a Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) outbreak. "At the Ward 4 neonatal ward, where most of the deaths occurred, there are 44 beds, but there were 61 babies when we visited and we were told that, in December, there were days when there were more than 100 babies," Bloom said. But, according to Tembisa Hospital CEO Dr Lekopane Mogaladi, the hospital has been managing to control CRE klebsiella cases, which averaged two a month from January to October last year. Bloom claimed the deaths could have been avoided if President Cyril Ramaphosa "had listened and acted effectively" when he visited the hospital in 2018. He said that Ramaphosa had "failed" to provide extra staff and resources at the hospital, even after he promised so on 20 May. According to Bloom, the "failed promises" within the health sector would lead to more avoidable deaths in hospitals.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Sesona Ngqakamba at News24
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page