The Eastern Cape government has rejected a claim by a suspended hospital official that 200 babies have been dying every month at East London’s two largest hospitals.
The former deputy manager of the East London Hospital Complex, Dr Nokuzola Ntshona, made the claim in an interview published in the Mail & Guardian on Friday.
Ntshona was suspended this week for blowing the whistle in the media on baby deaths at the Hospital.
She claims babies have been dying at the rate of 200 a month in Cecilia Makiwane and Frere Hospitals for the past 14 years and that nothing has been done about it. She said doctors at the hospitals are too scared to raise the issue.
“I was shocked when Doctor [Gerald] Boon, the chairperson of paediatrics for the past 22 years, said up to 400 babies were dying in the two hospitals every month. He said 10 500 babies in the Eastern Cape do not reach their fifth birthday. Is that not serious?” she said.
However, provincial government spokesperson Phaphama Mfenyana said statistics show that the average number of infant deaths at both hospitals combined from April last year to March this year was 49 a month. Roughly half of them were at Frere and half at Cecilia Makiwane.
At each site, roughly half were newborns and the other half children older than one month.
The rate of perinatal deaths was 33,8 per 1 000 births of babies weighing more than 1kg.
By comparison, similar facilities elsewhere in the country recorded a death rate of 38,2 per 1 000 in 2004, and 34,9 per 1 000 in 2005.
Of the deaths occurring in newborns, only 15% related to infection. Of the deaths in the non-newborn group, more than half were due to HIV-related illnesses.
Hospital staff hold regular meetings to look at way of decreasing the risk of deaths or disability in future patients, Mfenyana said.