A R10-million provincial cash injection for equipment at the East Rand’s ailing Natalspruit hospital could be too little too late, Democratic Alliance health spokesperson Jack Bloom said on Wednesday.
Blaming provincial inaction for the hospital’s woes, he said prevention would have been better than cure.
”Relationships here are poisoned and more difficult to repair than pre-emptively rectify.”
Bloom was on the health portfolio committee that grilled staff and union representatives on problems festering since 1994 at the hospital during an oversight visit on Wednesday.
The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) said hospital chief executive Dr Daisy Pekane should be ”redeployed” to another institution.
Nehawu accused her of ill-treating staff, bargaining in bad faith and trying to save money at the expense of hospital care.
Pekane denied the allegations, instead claiming Nehawu has been against her since the contract for hospital security was awarded to a firm owned by her uncle after tender procedures she began, but was not involved in, soon after her appointment in 2001.
While conceding that the hospital has shown huge savings on its multimillion-rand staffing budget under her management, she said it has been unable to use this money to bolster its overspent equipment budget.
Only recently did the Gauteng health department step in to help hire the personnel the hospital had been unable to attract amid an exodus of existing staff.
It was also only now that the department has given it the money needed to replace dilapidated equipment — some dating back to the establishment of the hospital.
Nurses took exception to Nehawu’s inference that they are guilty of killing babies through malpractice, including hand-washing with household scourer rather than medicated liquid soap, and rinsing equipment under tap water instead of properly sterilising it.
Of the much-publicised 76 baby deaths in the hospital’s neo-natal intensive-care unit in one month alone earlier this year, only six were caused by infections contracted in the hospital, said representatives of the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa, and the Health and Other Services Personnel Trade Union of South Africa.
The other deaths were due to prematurity, severe asphyxiation, respirator distress syndrome and Aids.
The oversight committee has asked the health department for the reports of two investigations it conducted at the hospital earlier this year.
The first, a clinical audit made available to the hospital soon after it was completed, found little compliance with day-to-day functions, including monitoring of urine and foetal heart rate, but no proof of criminal malpractice.
The second, a probe into human relations at the hospital, has not been made public until now because it names people, said departmental spokesperson Popo Maja. Its findings on the state of labour relations at the hospital are damning, he said.
Oversight committee chairperson Dr Rashid Salojee, who will receive the reports for deliberation, described Wednesday’s talks as ”heartening”. — Sapa