Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said on Saturday she does not know who her new deputy will be.
”I wish I was the president of the country. I would answer that question of the country, but I’m not,” said Tshabalala-Msimang in reply to a question about possible candidates for the position. She was speaking at a press briefing held in Durban’s Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Hospital.
Tshabalala-Msimang was touring the hospital to see what improvements had taken place at the hospital’s maternity and neonatal wards where a failure of infection-control measures led to a klebsiella outbreak that claimed the lives of 22 babies in 2005.
Further questions could not be asked as the press conference was ended before she went on a tour of the hospital.
This was followed by a short tour of Prince Mshiyeni Memorial Hospital in Durban’s Umlazi hospital. She was later to attend the launch of a mobile clinic in Umzumbe, near Port Shepstone.
Referring to the klebsiella outbreak, she said: ”There is not a single person you could point at and say that this one was responsible.”
Task team
Shortly after the outbreak, a task team was set up to investigate the causes of the outbreak and claims that up to 40 babies had also died of the disease at the hospital in 2003.
The Nelson Mandela School of Medicine’s Professor Willem Sturm, who headed the task team, said that of the 509 deaths between January 2003 and July 2005, 71 were caused by the klebsiella bacteria.
The 22 klebsiella deaths in 2005 were linked to a failure of infection-control measures. A previous report of Sturm’s attributed the outbreak to insufficient hand washing by neonatal intensive-care unit staff.
The contamination was caused by the multiple use of intravenous bottles to administer Vamin-Glucose. Details of his report were released in June last year.
Tshabalala-Msimang said: ”I think at that time [in 2006] … I remember I reminded you of the legacy of the past that these hospitals were really not built with an understanding or concern that people would come and be admitted.”
Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Hospital manager Dr Lindiwe Ndlovu said infant mortality rates at the hospital have ”declined dramatically” following the construction of a new ward and the implementation of infection-control measures recommended by Sturm’s task team.
Tshabalala-Msimang said all the country’s nine provincial health ministers will be visiting the Eastern Cape at the end of August ”because serious challenges” have been identified.
She said that she will not be going back to East London’s Frere Hospital because ”because as I understand that certain recommendations that were made have already been implemented”.
The hospital has been at the centre of a political storm amid claims that 200 babies a month had died in Cecilia Makiwane and Frere hospitals for the past 14 years — figures the government has rejected. — Sapa