Charlotte Maxeke Hospital delays are unacceptable

On the face of it, it is good news that Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital is to reopen gradually, following the devastating fire a year ago … but the question is: why has it taken so long?

Gift of the Givers organisation was called in earlier this year by hospital management to help out with an engineering assessment and was horrified this had not yet been asked for by the authorities, more than 11 months after the fire.

So, almost a year of dithering meant that patients were without access to one of the most important hospitals in the country.

Many had to be transferred to other institutions, which were already under pressure themselves because of staff shortages, only partially relieved by the redeployment of people from the closed hospital.

Quite why there had to be such delays can only, we believe, be down to one or two things (or even both): rank incompetence and jockeying for position to get the lucrative reconstruction tenders by the ANC’s trough feeders.

What cannot be argued, however, is the fact that people would have died because of these delays … and people will continue to die as the process drags on until the end of next year.

That is unacceptable.

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