State health sector is on life support

To see the “ground zero” impact of corruption under the ANC government – and especially the billions looted from health budgets during Covid – there is no better place than a state hospital.

Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital is still in ruins because repairs have not yet begun after a fire ripped through it in April last year. And other government health facilities in Gauteng – the most populous and richest province in the country – are a disgrace.

On our undercover visits to these institutions, we got to see the collapsing infrastructure, the litter, the decay and lack of controls. Our latest was to the Tambo Memorial Hospital in Boksburg – and our reporter wrote that its rundown state was an insult to the courageous man whose name it is meant to commemorate. Paint is peeling off
walls, windows are broken, toilets and bathrooms are wrecked and security allows injured or disturbed patients to wander around, begging from visitors.

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In some places, there is a semblance of order – floors are clean although the linoleum is worn down to almost
nothing. But in others, employees are clearly not doing their jobs as litter is dumped in public and patient folders and files lie around haphazardly.

We do sympathise with the provincial department of health, which is struggling to maintain and replace infrastructure despite insufficient funds (corruption, thank you again). The authorities also face the reality that fittings are frequently stolen.

Our hospitals may be an ominous portent of things to come if the National Health Insurance scheme is pushed through and the private health sector is leached to prop up ailing government facilities (and provide more opportunity for looting for cadres, no doubt).

Scores of doctors and other medical personnel have left the country, or are planning to, because of this.

Our state health system needs resuscitation.