Cape Town – The metro’s Forensic Pathology Service (FPS) at state mortuaries cannot meet the admission-to-release period due to a significant increase in caseload.
The provincial Department of Health has attributed this to a number of factors, including the increase in violent crime and population.
The service admitted 11 931 cases last year, said provincial health department spokesperson Mark van der Heever.
“The metro has yet again seen a significant increase in admissions to the two large facilities with 8437 admissions - 4 400 cases admitted to Tygerberg and 4037 at the Salt River mortuary.
"December saw the busiest month in the history of the Tygerberg unit with 435 cases admitted and 367 admissions to Salt River.
The department said the 2018/19 festive season has seen an increased admission rate compared with2017/18.
“From the perspective of the grieving family members, the delay in releasing and burying loved ones is unacceptable,” Van der Heever said.
“In terms of service delivery, the FPS strives for an admission-to-release period of five days, and we were not able to meet that target due to the increase in cases admitted.”
He added that Tygerberg and Salt River employed 11 and 10 medical professionals respectively.
While it was calculated that, to perform optimally, each unit needed about 20 medical professionals.
Professor Johan Dempers, a senior forensic pathologist and head of the division of forensic medicine and pathology at the Tygerberg Forensic Pathology Laboratory, said: “It takes time for backlogs to be cleared as pathologists and forensic pathology officers can only do so many cases before becoming fatigued and for the quality of work to suffer significantly.
“Clearing the backlog is also dependent on the admission rate tapering off, of course.”
Dempers added that at Tygerberg, registrars were performing an average of 435 cases annually.
This was a huge number of cases, especially considering the National Association of Medical Examiners recommendation that a registrar should not do more than 250 supervised cases annually, and the Western Cape FPS recommendation of no more than 350 cases annually.
“A pathologist can only do so much in a workday.
“Any task that requires the attention and focus of the pathologist over and above what he or she can do in a day, adds significantly to the stress and anxiety experienced by pathologists and forensic staff,” Dempers said.