The death rate among newborn babies at East London’s main public hospital does not differ significantly from the national norm, President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday.
”The facts communicate the conclusion that neonatal mortality at Frere Hospital is not significantly different from the national incidence of such mortality,” he said in his weekly online newsletter.
Earlier this month, the city’s Daily Dispatch newspaper published a report stating there was a very high death rate among newborns in the hospital’s maternity section. This prompted Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang to order an investigation into conditions at the hospital. The appointed investigators included a special adviser to the minister, Professor Ronnie Green-Thompson.
The situation at Frere Hospital has been sharply criticised by the Democratic Alliance (DA). Health spokesperson Mike Waters threatened legal action if he did not receive a copy of the investigating team’s report on the situation at the hospital.
Mbeki said on Friday it was clear Waters had decided the Daily Dispatch published the truth, and that Green-Thompson and his fellow medical professionals had told lies. However, the ”verifiable facts” were that the findings of the Daily Dispatch about the neonatal mortality rate at Frere Hospital were false.
He said the furore over the baby deaths continued, ”because for the DA and others it is not the truth that matters … but the pursuit of an agenda centred on winning political victories over the African National Congress and the government and positioning themselves as the principal actors with regard to defining our country’s future”.
Mbeki wished the national and provincial departments of health and Frere Hospital success in their efforts to implement the recommendations contained in the Green-Thompson report.
”We salute and thank the staff at Frere Hospital for its ‘commitment to service delivery’, which was mentioned in [a] statement made by the minister of health,” he said.
In a statement later on Friday, Waters said Mbeki was ”dead wrong”.
”The truth … is that an unacceptably high number of babies die at Frere Hospital; children which, in most cases, are born to poor, rural black South Africans, in the ANC’s heartland. The truth is that the ANC government has failed the people serviced by Frere Hospital,” he said.
The DA will ”reveal further revelations” about the situation at Frere Hospital and the government’s report in a media statement on Sunday, Waters said. — Sapa