Gauteng health MEC Masuku outlines his plans to fix department

Gauteng’s new health MEC Dr Bandile Masuku hates hackneyed terms such as “turnaround” and “recovery” and prefers to concentrate on “what needs to be done”.

That is how he wants to approach his work as the political head of the troubled provincial department which, for the past few years, had been in the intensive care unit and beset by numerous crises.

“We should focus on what needs to be done. Let’s not talk about turning around, recovering and so on because so many times turnarounds have happened, recoveries have happened.”

He identified unstable leadership as one of the main problems in the provincial health department. The seven MECs – Brian Hlongwa, Qedani Mahlangu, Ntombi Mekgwe, Mahlangu again, Gwen Ramokgopa and himself – in the past 10 years was a sign of leadership instability.

“We need a sustained, consistent, stable leadership in the department. The Life Esidimeni incident is a sign you would see in an organisation that doesn’t have strong leadership,” Masuku said.

A medical doctor by profession, Masuku knows what needs to be done at the province’s hospitals and clinics – “because I have been there”.

He had first-hand experience of problems like understaffing, overworked employees, and the impact of resource shortages such as medicines.

Masuku this week announced a R50.8 billion budget for his department which, he said, has to be spent wisely to address the existing problems. The quality of healthcare needed to be improved.

“Let’s look at how we are going to improve the quality as it relates to mental health because of the Life Esidimeni crisis,” Masuku said. “We need to know how to deal with this epidemic. Almost daily, we have 10 to 12 patients in casualty who suffer from mental illnesses.

“There is already a strategy developed by a team which advises the MEC on the approach to mental health.”

He allocated R1.4 billion to psychiatric hospitals, of which R347 million would go to district health services to respond to mental healthcare needs, with NGOs getting R202 million.

The MEC said they would use the experience of the past five years to gauge what needed to be done to address complaints around waiting time by patients, shortage of medicines and cleanliness of facilities. He understood that events such as the fire that engulfed the Johannesburg building that housed the department demoralised staff.

Absenteeism and depression were prevalent due to lack of a healthy environment – something the department was prioritising.

“Our staff are the main pillars of our health system and they get little appreciation. They work with shortage of equipment, but the system continues to work.

“We appreciate our staff and we want to recognise and appreciate them more,” he said.

Masuku also set aside R600 million to secure patients and staff at health facilities, which included installation of CCTV surveillance, panic buttons and access control mechanisms to detect guns, knives and other dangerous weapons. He wanted to insource security at the facilities.

Responding to the crisis of long lists for surgeries at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto, Masuku said this was caused by shortages at provincial hospitals.

“We don’t have enough theatre time, we don’t have enough theatres and we don’t have enough theatre staff. There is a backlog – but we are planning to collaborate with private hospitals to give us the theatres they are not using. We want to reduce waiting time.”

Masuku said that under his leadership, he would ensure that clinics operated 24 hours a day with 24-hour X-ray and pharmaceutical services.

His priority would be to strengthen leadership at all hospitals by prioritising the hiring of chief executive officers for facilities. They were targeting young people to fill vacant positions in hospitals.

“I don’t want to put time frames, but I’m optimistic that we can achieve this. We are talking about sorting out our health system,” Masuku said.

– news@citizen.co.za

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