The Democratic Alliance (DA) has appealed to the Northern Cape Health Department to urgently address the collapse of ambulance services in the Namakwa district, marked by the closure of seven Emergency Medical Service (EMS) stations.
A fatal accident in Steinkopf recently shone the spotlight on the worsening lack of ambulance availability. A young man who was knocked down by a motor vehicle on the N7, passed away while it took an ambulance from Springbok over an hour to reach him because there are no emergency services based in Steinkopf.
This is one of many tragic ambulance failures experienced in the province due to critical fleet and staff shortages. Staff are overstretched and burnt out and overtime is unsustainable due to dependency on off-duty staff for after-hour calls. Namakwa’s calls have further been diverted to Upington’s call centre, lengthening response times while simultaneously straining Upington’s limited call centre capacity.
According to the latest figures, the provincial department is functioning with less than 60 operational ambulances, instead of the targeted 130. Even last month’s roll out of 22 new ambulances by the MEC and the Premier has not made a difference, with 13 new ambulances still not registered and not yet in use.
The DA has been exposing shortfalls in ambulance services, and urging for two-man crews, for years. We repeatedly raised our concerns with the MEC, Maruping Lekwene, and most recently the Premier, Dr Zamani Saul, during a question time session in March. Saul’s claims that the Northern Cape boasts the best response times in the country, rings hollow when looking at the bigger crisis within the EMS unit.
For as long as the MEC and Premier choose to ignore the deteriorating state of health care in Namakwa and the rest of the province, more people will be left without access to lifesaving services and more people will die.
The DA has requested the MEC to urgently respond to the ambulance crisis in the Namakwa district. We have also updated the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) on the worsening state of ambulances in the Northern Cape, in relation to our previous complaint.
We will continue fighting for better emergency medical services for all people of the Northern Cape.