The Democratic Alliance (DA) is demanding urgent intervention from the Northern Cape Department of Health after oversight visits revealed a healthcare system in crisis across Siyancuma Municipality.
Clinics in Campbell and Douglas are battling severe staff shortages, broken ambulance services, collapsing infrastructure, and unsafe conditions that are putting patients’ lives at risk.
At Campbell Clinic, a single professional nurse serves the entire community while ambulance shortages leave patients waiting hours for emergency transport from Douglas or Griekwastad. In one case, police had to transport a child who overdosed because no ambulance was available. Another epileptic child received no emergency response, while a cardiac patient reportedly waited four hours for transport. These are not isolated incidents.
The nurse at Campbell Clinic has lodged complaints with the South African Human Rights Commission over the ongoing ambulance crisis, yet conditions remain high risk and unchanged.
At Breipaal Clinic in Douglas, overcrowding and infrastructure failures have reached critical levels. Nearly 3 000 patients are treated monthly in a facility too small to cope. Corridors are cluttered with boxes, windows and doors are broken, sewerage is overflowing, toilets are blocked, and there is no hot water.
Only two professional nurses and three assistants serve thousands of patients each month, leaving staff exhausted and unable to provide adequate care.
Frontline nurses are forced to improvise under impossible conditions. One nurse reportedly salvaged an old bedside cabinet, that her husband welded wheels onto, for use in her consultation room.
Reports also indicate that plans for a new clinic, first proposed in 2017, were abandoned after funding ran out.
These conditions violate residents’ constitutional right to healthcare and reflect a serious failure of governance by the provincial health department.
The DA has submitted our findings and concerns to Health MEC, Nontobeko Vilakazi, for urgent intervention, including:
• Restoring reliable ambulance services to Campbell and surrounding areas;
• Filling critical nursing vacancies in Campbell and Douglas;
• Addressing the sewerage and infrastructure failures at Breipaal Clinic;
• Providing a timeline for the promised new clinic in Douglas; and
• Conducting an urgent audit of healthcare facilities across Siyancuma Municipality.
Rural communities deserve safe, dignified healthcare, and healthcare workers deserve the support needed to serve their patients properly.