A targeted approach is urgently required to address the ballooning surgery backlog in the Northern Cape.
The surgery backlog has more than doubled since around this time last year. In May 2023, Health MEC Maruping Lekwene said the backlog stood at 4 000. By June 2023, the figure was reported at 6 373. This grew to 7 497 by the end of September and, according to the latest third quarterly report, shot up to 8 621 by the end of December 2023.
The alarming growth in the surgery backlog can no longer be predominantly attributed to the Covid pandemic. While this aggravated the backlog, a number of other factors have caused a snowball effect. This has included water shortages and power crises in addition to the ongoing lack of specialized theatre staff.
The dire lack of infrastructure maintenance, including the faulty Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system at Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe hospital (RMSH), is also proving detrimental to the surgery list. Due to infrastructure issues, only between one and four theatres have been operational at any given time. This is in contrast with the hospital’s nine operating theatres in total. The increasingly dire lack of operational theatres is effectively nullifying the use of a Gauteng-based Medicomed at a cost of R400 000 per month to assist with orthopaedic surgeries at the hospital.
It is inhumane that for surgeries such as hip replacements there are patients who have been in hospital for more than 18 months, with some people waiting up to five years for cataracts to be removed. Many people die before they get the opportunity to have surgery. Others’ lives have been put on hold causing significant trauma to them and their families. Some of them are also breadwinners, aggravating already extreme levels of poverty.
It is clear that a different approach is needed to address the skyrocketing number of surgery backlogs in the province. The contract for the surgery agency needs to be urgently reviewed; additional theatre nurses must be appointed; critical infrastructure such as the HVACs need to be properly repaired; the other stagnating theatres also have to be operationalized and necessary appointments made to allow for this desperately needed expansion of theatre services. Facilities for surgical recovery also need to be expanded.
Unless these measures are implemented, the surgical backlog will continue to rise, destroying and even prematurely terminating people’s lives because of the deadly lack of health care services at RMSH.
It is only a Democratic Alliance (DA) government that will rescue South Africans from a failing public health system caused by skills shortages and delays in health infrastructure maintenance.