Cape Town - The relocation of GF Jooste Hospital has doctors and nursing unions up in arms, while Cosatu has dismissed the move as an election gimmick.
The unions have said the relocation is a “great contradiction” to what provincial authorities promised a few years ago.
The SA Medical Association (Sama) said it was taken aback by yet another announcement of a new hospital in Manenberg, saying it learnt of the plan for the first time through the media.
Sama vice chairman Dr Mark Sonderup said despite being one of the organisations at the coalface of healthcare, the association was never approached about plans to build a R3 billion hospital in Manenberg.
He expressed concern about the impact the closure of GF Jooste has had in the provision of healthcare in the province. He said since it shut its doors more than a year ago, other hospitals have been buckling under the pressure. Many were filled beyond capacity with patients, resulting in inadequate treatment.
“We are profoundly disappointed with the way the whole GF Jooste Hospital issue has played out. It looks like the residents of the Western Cape won’t have a replacement hospital for at least another five years. When the province planned to close down GF Jooste Hospital we indicated our extreme concern that services were removed before they were replaced adequately. The load of the closure has been very significant. Many hospitals that had to absorb patients from GF Jooste are today experiencing more than 100 percent bed occupancy rate… it’s a very tough situation for many health workers,” he said.
But Coleen Smart, the spokeswoman for Health MEC Nomafrench Mbombo, has justified the lack of consultation, saying the plan to relocate was only approved in principle by cabinet on the day of the announcement.
“As is the norm, consultations and processes will now flow from this. It must be noted that the entire development strategy for Manenberg is based on partnerships and active community participation,” she said.
She said high occupancy rates had always been the norm at these facilities, and that the demand had “increased but it is manageable”.
This week Mbombo promised a R3bn “skyscraper” medical facility as part of the plan to urbanise Manenberg through the Urban Upgrading project. Mbombo said the regional hospital would offer a higher level of care that GF Jooste originally provided. She said once the “business case” for the rebuilding of the hospital site - which had been extensively vandalised recently - had been finalised, her department would look at the reallocation of the hospital. It was expected to take between 12 and 18 months to rebuild the new regional hospital.
The new hospital is set to cost four times more than the original district hospital that was planned at an estimated cost of R550 million.
The National Education Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) in the province also weighed in on the debate, with provincial secretary Luthando Nogcinisa describing it as the “greatest contradiction” by the DA-run province.
The union, which represents mostly nurses in the health sector, was shocked by the “media announcement concerning GF Jooste”.
Nogcinisa said despite warnings from health interest groups at the time, the province ignored “people’s voices on the ground”.
“We never supported the move in the first place because we felt that it robbed the community of crucial health services, but the provincial government was adamant that it had everything under control, but it looks like they never had a plan in the first place. For years now the community of Manenberg must live without health services because of poor decisions… it’s so unfortunate,” he said.
Cosatu’s provincial secretary Tony Ehrenreich described the upgrade of the hospital as an election gimmick following mismanagement of the project.
“If they had planned to build a bigger hospital on a different site, why did they not leave GF Jooste operational for sick people until the new hospital is built?” he asked.
The ANC leader in the province, Marius Fransman, described the new plan to build the hospital as “fabrication”.
He said because of the hospital’s closure, Manenberg, Gugulethu and Langa were now without specialist services.
Despite the hospital being well known for its specialist services such the treatment of gunshot wounds, and its effective antiretroviral programme, “these poor people now have to go to other far away hospitals at great expense”.
“It is also utterly shameful that (Helen) Zille - who in her 2013 State of the Province address still promised the ‘planned re-construction of GF Jooste hospital’ - while in the background the hospital was scrapped, the site reassigned and the building of a new hospital for that area is shifted for years on the backburner,” Fransman said.
But Smart defended the change of plans by the province, saying given the long-term health needs in Manenberg, it was agreed that a regional hospital instead of a district hospital would be built.
Cape Argus