The Western Cape department of health has asked the Scorpions for help in busting a suspected crime syndicate stealing hospital linen.
”In the past three years we have lost hospital linen to the value of more than R23-million,” provincial minister of health Piet Meyer said on Wednesday.
Meyer said security measures such as spy cameras, extra security staff, stricter access controls and improved control at laundries implemented in 2002 saw theft reduced to R5-million, from R10-million the previous year.
However, in 2003, hospitals still lost linen worth R7-million.
”… I am not talking about patients and the family and friends of patients who steal our linen — we are dealing with organised crime,” said Meyer, alluding to ”truck loads” disappearing.
However, Andrew Cunninghame, the department’s chief director of professional support services, said according to his view the thefts could be blamed on a large number of people taking linen away.
”If one in every 100 people wandering in our hospitals takes one piece every time they walk in… then we will get 100 000 pieces of linen,” he said, highlighting that at any given time there were about 8 000 patients in a hospital, who each received about two visitors per day.
This excluded the thousands of contract workers, volunteers and out-patients at hospitals.
Cunninghame said they had discussed placing an electronic tag within the seam of the linen, but this could be overcome by simply cutting out the tag or throwing the linen out of windows for accomplices to collect.
”We have anguished over different systems… what we can do, what we can’t do,” Cunninghame said, adding that any system adopted had to be financially viable.
He said the problem increased over the years from the 1980’s and became ”really serious” in 1995, when a task team was established to look at streamlining linen services and safeguarding the linen.
”It is clear that the extra steps which were taken at great cost, did not have the necessary effect,” Meyer said.
Asked why it had taken the department so long to call in the police and specialised investigators the Scorpions, Meyer said he was only informed of the extent of the problem about three weeks ago when told of linen being sold at a flea market in the Spanish town of Barcelona.
Meanwhile, Quinton Escreet, the department of health’s head of laundries, said laundries servicing hospitals were working overtime to compensate for the shortfall of linen to patients.
”The laundry turnaround time has increased to 24 hours, [up] from the normal three days,” said Escreet, who didn’t want to speculate on whether or not patients were getting cold as a result of the shortages. – Sapa