Some KZN clinics are 24 000 patients over capacity and need urgent help

3 May 2016

I will write today to the KZN MEC for Health, Dr. Sibongiseni Dhlomo, to seek an urgent appointment with him to discuss problems we identified during an oversight visit conducted with DA KZN MPL Dr. Imraan Kheeka at Lindelani Clinic in KwaMashu,  Kwamakhutha Clinic in Umlazi (joined by my colleagueDianne Kohler Barnard MP and Cllr. Andre Beetge) and R.K. Khan Hospital (joined by Rafeek Khan, MPL) in Chatsworth.

At every one of these health-care facilities we found hard-working and devoted health professionals working beyond the call of duty and under great duress in the face of most demanding of circumstances. For example, one clinic was seeing 24 000 patients over capacity in one month without the requisite resources to cater for the excessive patient traffic.

Specifically, at Lindelani Clinic we established that:

- The patient load there was in excess of 24 000 individuals per month;

- Half of the professional health staff complement needed and only a pharmacist assistant working mornings only in a 24/7 clinic were on the payroll;

- Waiting times were longer than 4 hours;

- Stock-outs were recurrent including for the most basic of things such as Panado; and

- The paper-based record system was fundamentally flawed because they  remained in the hands of the patients who could not be relied upon to keep these in safe custody. 

At Kwamakhuta Clinic Umlazi we established:

- The need for 2 more advanced midwives and 2 more clerical assistants for what is after all a 24/7 clinic;

- The need for a back-up generator in an area of where electricity supply is unreliable;

- Connections to the internet for the new but unused computers already supplied;

- A dispensary housed in a room that leaks very badly and where is no control over temperature (pharmaceutical inspectors would shut down such a facility);

- TB, HIV and other patients that are all mixed up in cramped facilities that pose a high risk of cross-infections; and

- Disastrously inadequate infrastructure, unacceptably poor offices for health staff and encumbered access for ambulances and wheelchairs.

At R.K. Khan in Chatsworth we established:

- The urgent need for X-Ray machines to diagnose and treat trauma patients in a  casualty that itself requires an infrastructure overall;

- The creation of a separate psychiatric ward designed for their needs (psychiatric patients are presently mixed up with general patients);

- The replacement of asbestos hospital roofs with safe roofing materials; and 

- A medium term plan to upgrade, renovate and develop the old St. Mary Hospital into a proper district hospital that would take considerable pressure off R.K. Khan. 

The residents served by these health facilities are hostage to KZN’s slow moving heath department. Some of the problems, like the X-Ray machine issue at R.K. Khan can be fixed now, others like staffing challenges in a year and yet others like a renovated district hospital over 2-5 years. 

The DA’s Universal Health Care (UHC) offer will show that an adaptable health system that focuses on fixing what needs to be fixed without waiting on a monumentally expensive and slow-moving National Health Insurance (NHI) that will take 8-15 years to implement. Required is a sense of urgency, focus and sheer common sense.  

South Africans should vote for a DA government that responds timeously and diligently to the health needs of the people in areas that we govern. South Africans should for the DA on 03 August for better services that move SA forward again.

Issued by Wilmot James, DA Shadow Minister of Health, 3 May 2016