Durban - KwaZulu-Natal Health MEC Sibongiseni Dhlomo has described as fairy tales reports that stray cats were causing havoc at a KwaZulu-Natal hospital where they were allegedly eating patients’ food and placing them at risk of catching diseases.
He was responding to a DA press statement, which raised concerned about an abundance of uncontrollable cats at Emmaus Provincial Hospital near Winterton.
When asked to respond to the allegations, Dhlomo said: “We don’t talk fairy tales. We are currently dealing with health issues, not fairy tales.”
When asked if the department would investigate the allegations, Dhlomo just said: “Ja”.
In his statement, DA MPL Imran Keeka said his party had been informed that the cats had been left to freely enter the hospital premises and help themselves to patients’ food.
Keeka is a medical doctor who said he had been practising for the past 18 years. He said he was concerned that if the cats were allowed to continue wandering around the hospital they would expose patients to diseases that could “be spread from cats to humans”.
“These include Toxoplasmosis, cat scratch disease, salmonella, campylobacter, giardia and cryptosporidium, roundworm, ringworm and, the most lethal of all, rabies.
“Furthermore, there is documented evidence that TB can spread from cats to humans. This after two people were found to have developed active TB after close contact with cats following an outbreak involving nine animals in the UK in 2013,” he said.
Keeka said he had received a similar complaint from Edendale Hospital in Pietermaritzburg.
He said he was also concerned that Emmaus management had blamed the department instead of dealing with the cats themselves.
“This shows a severe lack of commitment to eradicating the problem.
“The DA will write to KZN Health MEC Sibongiseni Dhlomo. We will request his intervention.”
Dhlomo said he knew nothing about the problem. His spokesman Desmond Motha said he had only heard about the cat problem at the hospital from SABC news.
The Mercury