By Muhammad Bham
22:08:2022

Three hospitals that constitute the Livingstone Tertiary Hospital in Gqeberha in the Eastern Cape are
pleading with the provincial Health Department to urgently implement crisis management as it is on the
brink of collapse.

The hospital serves over 2.5 million people in the Eastern Cape area and is the only hospital to cater for specific specialist procedures in the entire province.

The DA’s Shadow Minister of Health, Michelle Clarke, told Radio Islam listeners that this hospital is like
many other hospitals in South Africa and other state hospitals. She believed that the state hospitals were on
life support.

Visiting several hospitals in the past few months, Clarke said that Livingstone is on the verge of collapse.
In a recent trip to the hospital, Clarke noted that some clinicians revealed that things were better after some
measures had been implemented. However, a week later, doctors called them frantically, saying they could
not perform urgent operations and procedures because of a linen shortage.

Last week, many doctors walked out, saying they could no longer manage the pressure and strain.
Clarke noted that state healthcare reached this stage because of bad management in the Executive.
Clinicians are trying to manage the hospital as best as possible but not getting any assistance from the
executive management.

Livingstone is not the only hospital where this was a core issue that needs to be addressed, but many other
hospitals have the same problem.

Addressing the issue with the government, Clarke said that they had asked their chairperson at the
committee to do an urgent oversight visit at Livingstone, but this never happened.
Clarke also reported the issue to the Health Ombudsman last week; the health ombudsman has
acknowledged the report for investigation.

Clarke said that she has written to the ombudsman and the health minister, stating the intervention is now
urgent.

Doing the oversight, Clarke noticed that the hospital had no paediatric out-patient clinic. There was no clean linen and blankets; the x-ray machine wasn’t working; there were no ECG electrolytes; no first-line antibiotics.

Other irregularities included the theatres for orthopaedic trauma cases not being up to standard, and
electrical certificates for the provincial hospital have not been confirmed in terms of compliance.

There was also an urgent need for a fully functional Linac machine for Radiotherapy.

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