JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Nelspruit | Thursday
MPUMALANGAS legislature has diverted funds from other departments to pay for its marble-floored R650m government complex, leading to doctors being forced to operate on critically injured patients by torchlight.
The complex, built in defiance of national treasury advice that it was too extravagant for a rural province, is blamed for many of Mpumalangas financial ailments.
The complexs imported marble floors, hand-carved hardwood doors and a seven-storey domed legislature chamber in landscaped gardens above a waterfall on the Crocodile and Nel rivers have prompted locals to dub it the palace.
Mpumalanga doctors are being forced to operate without much of the medicine or other equipment they need. Even basics such as sterile gloves, swabs, and intravenous drips are unavailable at major hospitals due to apparent financial mismanagement.
Nurses at Rob Ferreira hospital in Nelspruit are expected to keep intensive care patients alive by manually pumping air into their lungs during regular power blackouts.
The crisis deepened even further this week when 15 of South Africas largest pharmaceutical companies froze deliveries of all chronic medicines to Mpumalanga because the province has repeatedly failed to pay a R25m overdue bill.
Mpumalangas pharmaceutical director Amos Masongo confirmed a cash-flow crisis, but referred all queries to Health MEC Sibongile Manana. Manana insisted she was too busy to comment.
Mpumalanga Director General Stanley Soko was not immediately available for comment, but has publicly admitted that the province illegally used budgets earmarked for basic services such as HIV/Aids programmes, social pensions and emergency flood relief programmes to pay for the building.
Mpumalangas poorest rural patients have borne the brunt of the apparent financial mismanagement in the province.
Supplies are so low at some hospitals that nurses at Mpumalangas largest hospital in Philadelphia are shredding linen for use as dressings and babies nappies, and patients at Piet Retiefs hospital were recently asked to donate coal for the furnaces, and advised to bring their own linen and food because local suppliers had cut deliveries.
All six of Rob Ferreiras senior doctors have resigned and will leave by the end of June. – African Eye News Service
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