MRI machines: health boss backpedals on calling them ‘not essential’

The National Health Insurance (NHI) Scheme will make Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machines more widely available in Gauteng hospitals, according to health MEC Dr Bandile Masuku – but the current shortage of the life-saving equipment in central hospitals was not cause for alarm, Masuku said.

He was responding to a backlash he received for suggesting that MRIs were not an essential medical service for primary healthcare.

This was after he revealed that four of the eight machines in government hospitals in the province were not operational, leaving hundreds on a long waiting list for the service.

Masuku said his statements were interpreted incorrectly by those who were making a case against the implementation of the NHI.

He said MRIs were needed in rare cases where other options had been exhausted.

“Those conditions don’t come every day; they are very rare conditions and, where there is a need for an MRI, even for the private medical aid schemes, you need to explain as a clinician what you want to do and how it is going to benefit the patient.

“The NHI will be able to fund and pay for this, but it is going to be under the same conditions. The NHI will make us be able to buy more machines so that we can have them in most of the hospitals that don’t have and actually require those machines.”

According to Masuku, these machines cost upwards of R3 million. In a revised assessment, he said only five out of the eight existing ones in government facilities in the province were functional, while the rest either had to be fixed or replaced.

A procurement process was under way for the replacement of one machine and the repair and maintenance of the others, including for Chris Hani-Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto.

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