The Inkatha Freedom Party has called on KwaZulu-Natal health MEC Sibongiseni Dhlomo to urgently appoint a task team to conduct an audit and investigate the condition of critical medical equipment at all provincial hospitals.
This comes after an 11-year-old child was injured when an X-ray machine collapsed on top of her at Prince Mshiyeni Memorial Hospital in Durban.
“I really don’t understand why machines are not being repaired or properly maintained,” IFP KwaZulu-Natal health spokeswoman Ncamisile Nkwanyana said on Saturday.
“What has happened at Prince Mshiyeni Hospital is a wake-up call for the MEC of health and his department officials. We are concerned about the state of the equipment… being used at this hospital, especially the old ones.
“It is frightening to contemplate what will happen when the other equipment stops working or [gets] damaged? The department has to decide whether it would be better to allocate more funds to purchase new equipment or whether it would be cost-effective to repair the old equipment.”
It was essential that medical equipment always operate at full capacity, as this could mean the difference between life and death for patients. When equipment malfunctioned, effective health care services were compromised and saving lives would be difficult, Nkwanyana said.
“Over the years there has been a sharp deterioration in health care at hospitals and clinics in KZN, marked by shortages of medicines, collapsing infrastructure, broken equipment, and inadequate provision of staff. This has led to a situation in which the access to health care services and patients’ dignity is compromised on a daily basis.”
Equipment needed to be audited and a plan needed to be drawn up to ensure that budgets were made available for the replacement of old equipment. The failures within the health care system should be addressed as a precursor to the implementation of the National Health Insurance (NHI).
A failure to remedy this would be a violation of the constitutional rights of patients and a further breach of the KwaZulu-Natal health department’s obligations. The gross disregard for the legal obligations by the provincial department and the vital oversight function of the national health department was extremely worrying and could not be allowed to continue unchallenged, Nkwanyana said.
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