Health department needs head checked

The Gauteng department of health did public relations flick-flacks on Friday to divert attention from what is becoming increasingly obvious: our hospitals are falling apart on their watch.

There was an unedifying spectacle this week of angry doctors and nurses protesting outside Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital in Soweto on a number of issues, ranging from the dismissal of healthcare workers hired at the height of the Covid pandemic, to the fact that patients were reportedly short of food.

The department dismissed the food claims, saying that it was “only bread” which was in short supply at the hospital.

And that shortage lasted “only” three weeks. That bread was not available at the biggest hospital in the southern hemisphere is apparently not a big deal to the people running the provincial department of health is beyond worrying.

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So is the fact that the department denied it was in a financial crisis yet, in the next breath, admitted it owed service providers more than R4 billion.

It did pay people, it said, but just not in full. As someone pointed out on Twitter, if you paid your bank only part of your bond each month, they’d soon take away your house.

If this is not a crisis, we don’t know what is.