GROOTE Schuur Hospital’s world-renowned heart transplant unit faces possible closure if a new quota system is introduced forcing the hospital to perform perhaps only five heart transplants a year, the Cape Argus newspaper has reported. This would shut off access to heart transplants – and the consequent chance at a new life – for the majority of state-sector heart patients in South Africa who would die without the operation. Groote Schuur is the only state hospital in the country that performs heart transplants, and nine have been performed already this year. Gilbert Lawrence, deputy director-general of the Western Cape’s Health Department, said in a statement that a quota was imposed on cardiac transplants for the first time in June, because of “the duty on all public sector hospitals to remain within budget”.
The quota system is part of planning to divert funding from expensive tertiary medicine to primary health care.