DURBAN - Oncology services in KwaZulu-Natal’s public hospitals have collapsed and there are no more doctors left in Durban who specialise in treating cancer.
There are still two oncologists at Grey’s Hospital in Pietermaritzburg.
The last cancer doctor at Inkosi Albert Luthuli Central Hospital will leave the public sector next week. Another finished on Thursday.
Today, ironically, is International Cancer Survivors Day, but for those with cancer who do not have access to private treatment, there is no help in KZN.
Yesterday KZN Health MEC Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo said the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine would also lose its Health Professions Council of SA (HPCSA) accreditation to train in oncology as a result of mass resignations.
He said there were no oncologists left in public health to train new cancer doctors.
Albert Luthuli treats 80% of the province’s cancer patients.
The two doctors had been holding cancer treatment in the province together after massive oncology resignations. The doctor who left on Thursday, Dr Sanele Kunene, said he had always planned to join the private health care sector.
He completed his training in October but opted to stay at the hospital to help because of the critical shortage of oncology skills.
“I was offered a job in the private sector and I decided I would take it but, because of the situation on the ground, I stayed on for a while to offer my services,” said Kunene.
Other oncologists who have left said their lives became too stressful and they blamed the Department of Health.
Oncologists were overworked as a result of the backlogs and critical shortages, they said.
Nurses and junior doctors at the hospital are in a panic as they have 4000 patients that receive cancer treatment at Inkosi and Addington hospitals.
The doctors said they could not help cancer patients who had to wait for months to be assessed for chemotherapy.
“There’s a point when enough is enough and you have no option but to do what’s best for yourself. Doctors are not selfish, we get into the profession to help people but if we are treated badly and placed under immense pressure all the time, should we just accept the situation or move onto better working environments?” asked one Durban oncologist who did not want to be named.
Dhlomo said: “We are training these oncologists but as soon as they are done, they all want to leave the public health sector.
“There are at least 50 oncologists in KZN who are in private practice but none of them are willing to offer any of their time when we are in a state of crisis. We have appealed to them for help.”
He said that in the interim, to solve the crisis, the department was considering sending cancer patients to private oncologists to get treatment.
“This will put further stress on the department as we will now have to be exhausting our budgets to ensure patients get treated.
“We are appealing to oncologists in KZN to meet with us and to let us know how much of their time they would be willing to give to us,” he said.
Dhlomo also said he thought it would be a good idea for post-graduate doctors to be bound by a contract stating they had to give time back to public health after being trained as specialists.
But that would have to be a national instruction, he said.
The DA’s spokesperson on health, Dr Imran Keeka, who has been raising issues regarding the oncology crisis for some time, said that cancer patients could not be treated at all without oncologists as it was a specialised field.
“This was inevitable. The MEC needs to take full responsibility for what has just happened. It is because of him that we are in this situation. He has made curable cancer become incurable and patients will suffer as a result of receiving no treatment at all,” said Keeka.