Radiation oncology services resume at Charlotte Maxeke

The cancer radiation unit at Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital in Johannesburg is operational again after being temporarily closed following a blaze that significantly damaged parts of the hospital building in April.

The radiation oncology unit is the largest of its kind in the country and treats around 3 000 patients a year.

“Radiation Oncology is in a process of resuming treating patients on Monday and we are starting with a pilot of treating 13 patients,” said the hospital’s head of Radiation Oncology, Duvern Ramiah.

“If all goes well we will slowly scale up by increasing the number of patients receiving radio therapy each day by about 10 patients.”

Remiah said that the hospital will for now be providing radio therapy to outpatients only as it will not be able to admit patients in yet.

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“Also at present we are only seeing patients who we have already consulted with. From next week if all goes well we will start taking new referrals from our referring hospitals. From there we will start over the next few weeks we will start seeing our follow up patients.”

Remiah urged patients not to come to the hospital’s radiation oncology department unless they are called.

He said although its machines were not damaged in the fire it will take some time for the department to be fully operational as some of their clinic rooms did suffer some damage.

“It will take time for us to see an optimal number of patients again, but we are confident that the steps that we have taken will enable us to get back to an optimal treatment capacity within a month,” said Remiah.

“Radiation oncology is probably the most complex high tech department in the hospital, and it’s been a challenge to get back to being the first unit to reopen at Charlotte Maxeke, but we of cause did this and we are confident that we will be able to scale up our numbers fairly quickly.”