Premier meets with hospital CEOs

MBOMBELA – It may be too little too late, but the Mpumalanga premier, Mr David Mabuza has finally intervened in the collapsing Department of Health.

Not only did he place it under immediate curatorship, but met with the CEOs of all 33 provincial hospitals in an effort to understand and get a clear overview of the entire health system yesterday.

The department has been crippled for years now by a lack of infrastructure and personnel and even the Human Rights Commission ruled in December that it is failing in its constitutional mandate of providing people with quality health care.

Mabuza admitted that the situation at the hospitals was extremely bad and had called for a bold commitment from the CEOs to work hand in hand with him and the curator in turning the situation around immediately.

Problems highlighted by CEOs included a lack of dilapidated and ageing infrastructure, which ranged from dysfunctional broilers and laundry machines to a lack of life-saving equipment. “While others complained about lack of enough accommodation for patients, some told Mabuza about leaking roofs and a lack of proper theatre tables,” said spokesman for the premier’s office, Mr Zibonele Mncwango.

“They said their budgets were not sufficient for their operations, groceries were running dry and some could not even pay their suppliers. They said linen had to be cleaned at distant hospitals that had such facilities,” he added.

Many of the CEOs are employed on acting capacity and the workmanship at the hospitals is also terrible. Some hospitals had serious water shortages and at some, patient safety was compromised, as there was lack of proper fencing.

In some instances, employees’ compensation had been exhausted due to staff shortages as people worked overtime continuously. The CEOs also complained about the lack of transport for their referred patients.

“We now have a general feel of the situation. Indeed it is bad with many problems. We need a commitment from this leadership to work with us in turning the situation around. We are going to rework their entire budget structures. We must further intervene with immediate effect in terms of infrastructure. Each and every hospital must be given a minimum number of people in order to be functional.

“As the provincial government, we will work on some certain powers which we think should be delegated to the CEOs, however, they must not abuse them. We want to ensure that they receive certain delegations and they must be able to handle the finances,” said Mabuza.

He explained that before such powers were delegated to the CEOs, the provincial government would ensure that systems at the hospitals were strengthened. He said the well-performing chief executive officers should be motivated.

“We cannot always be regarded as a bad province when it comes to the matters of health. We have men and women who are able to turn things around here. We must not allow the challenges to overcome us. We cannot afford to destroy the skill and talent we have in these people, we must protect our hard-working individuals.

“We need to treat one another as a family. We must love our beautiful province and its people, in that way, we will definitely go the extra mile in serving them with passion. There should be progress in the people’s lives, otherwise if we cannot work, we must simply just go to the graves,” said Mabuza.

He explained that he was going to change the tone and take stringent actions in changing the situation in the health system, as it was the government at the end of the day that was regarded as failing the people.

He added that the provincial Department of Health would standardise and normalise the prices for consumables as different suppliers charged government different exorbitant amounts when supplying food to the hospitals.