The following speech was delivered by Dr Tutu Faleni MPL, at a media conference today Wednesday 28 June 2017 in Mafikeng.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

This past a week another infant, Leungo Mpofu, passed away. Another child and family that were failed by our current government’s health system.

The sad part is that, as to yet, we cannot establish if this baby died due to medical negligence or due to a lack of patient transport – or both?

The bereaved mother, Dineo Mpofu, had to hitch-hike back home with her baby on her back after she was stranded at a hospital nearly 200km from her home.

The issue here is not only the medical reasons for the death of baby Leungo but also the failure to provide transport. This has compromised the health of a fragile baby days after her birth.

No ill infant can travel in this cold, exposed to the elements and survive.

It is our Constitutional duty to hold the Executive of the Provincial Government to account to the people of the North West.

We are not in the legislature to warm benches, heckle at the ANC when their members make long and often misleading speeches. We are in the Legislature to ensure that the Provincial Government delivers on its mandate to the people of the Province.

Therefore today we focus on the deteriorating state of delivery of health services in the North West Province. Our people deserve better.

We have spoken on numerous occasions about the poor and non-accessible transport system for patients, the weak and the frail which exposes the lives of people to risk.

The North West Department of Health has to date, and despite a lot of empty promises, failed to put in place an accessible transport system which will ensure that patients are transported to health facilities to receive proper medical care.

We have as the Democratic Alliance raised the issue of transport as a matter of life and death. We were promised in a Portfolio Committee meeting that the Department of Health is working with the Department of Social Development to develop a Memorandum of Understanding which will put in place guidelines for patient transport.

Just another empty promise.

We have highlighted incidents where pensioners pay as much as R1000 for transport and where some of them are transported in wheelbarrows to collect medication from health facilities.

The NW Department of Health has taken misguided strategic decisions on Emergency Medical Services. The bulk of EMS (Emergency Medical Services) has been outsourced to private companies which have been contracted to provide ambulance services to transport patients in the Province.

A proper strategic decision on the EMS could have been to:

• Upgrade the current fleet of ambulances in our province;
  • Provide training to the unemployed youth on EMS and have them employed by the Department of Health; and
  • Conduct a due diligence study on the cost-benefit analysis of outsourcing EMS instead of using EMS as a model for skills training and provision of employment opportunities for the unemployed youth;

The Premier has, since the 2014 SOPA, made announcements that taxis would be used to transport patients from the deep rural areas of the Province to health centres – especially in cases of life-threatening emergency. There has not been any progress made on this arrangement and the results of the promised pilot project have not been made public.

There is also an absence of helicopter landing pads in key rural hospitals as well as hospitals such as Genl De La Rey in Lichtenburg.

Transport by air in the form of helicopters is used to save time and get the patients to hospitals as fast as possible since by losing time one can lose his or her life. We have requested the MEC for Health to ensure that rural hospitals have the needed helicopter landing pads to enable helicopters to be able to land properly at hospitals. To date hospitals in rural areas (such as Ganyesa District Hospitals) are not accessible to air ambulances.

Our hospitals are a disgrace. Below are just some of the shortcomings that the DA has identified in some of our provincial hospitals recently:

• A dilapidated roof structure in the paediatric ward of the hospital;
  • Only one functional washing machine to clean sheets and bedding;
  • A non-functional pill counting machine; and
  • An acute shortage of key health care professionals and support staff

At Taung Gateway Clinic and Bethanie Clinic the following shortcomings have been identified:

• Unhygienic state of the facility;
  • Poor filing systems in place;
  • Extremely long patient waiting period;
  • Shortage of medication;
  • No laundry or cleaning machines;and
  • Poor maintenance of the clinic building

At Oukasie General and Maternity Clinic a part of the building structure of the hospital has been burnt and continues to be used and this poses a health hazard to doctors’ nurses and patients.

This is the picture of our province’s health care facilities…

Perhaps the most bizarre practice uncovered by the Public Services Committee was the action taken by health staff encouraging patients to use home remedies to treat cold due to the of lack of cough medicine.

This sad state of affairs is further worsened by a shortage of water, proper air conditioning and working ablution facilities. Ultraviolet (UV) lights reduce the transmission of TB by trapping bacteria and preventing it from circulating in the air. None of these lights were available at the clinics visited by the PSC. The Mahikeng Provincial Hospital has a UV light installed, but nobody could confirm to the PSC if it is in a working condition.

Following intense oversight visits by us, we have gathered that the health system not only fails our communities and contravenes their Constitutional rights but also failed at five of the six National Core Health Standards which include:

• Values and attitude of staff
• Cleanliness
• Waiting time
• Infection prevention and control and
• Availability of basic medicines and supplies