The state of Pollsmoor Prison's health services was an embarrassment to the department of correctional services, with staff shortages a mirror of what was happening elsewhere in the country's prisons, according to national commissioner Vernie Petersen
The National Assembly's correctional services committee heard that the prison's hospital was admitting psychiatric patients while it did not have the capacity to conduct mental observations.
Some of the drugs kept in the medicine cabinets had expired in 2004 and there was no proper medicines' register in place, a committee delegation found.
Petersen and his senior managers appeared before the committee to report on health-related matters at the prison and others around the country.
This followed an unannounced visit by a three-member delegation - comprising the ANC's Cindy Chikunga and Samson Mahote, and DA MP James Selfe - to the prison on May 30. They compiled the damning report that was discussed yesterday.
Petersen said that they had implemented an action plan to deal with the problems.
He said that the department had advertised more vacant posts at the hospital. There are now 14 nurses caring for a jail population of 7 472. It also emerged that the department has only four pharmacists for 40 posts and only 25 psychologists for 90 financed posts.
The committee gave the department 90 days to fix things at Pollsmoor.