A wildcat strike has left patients at the Nelson Mandela Academic Hospital and surrounding clinics and hospitals without life-saving medicines and treatment for the last two weeks. Reports indicate that the administrative staff went on strike because they are unhappy about their exclusion from a performance bonus.
Following a Health-e report last week and after initially denying it, Dr Nomonde Xundu, the head of health in Gauteng, has now confirmed that she is leaving the distressed unit after serving only 11 months of her three-year contract.
Story by Thandeka Vinjwa, an OurHealth Citizen Journalist reporting from Lusikisiki in the OR Tambo district of the Eastern Cape.
Story by Selloane Molakeng, an OurHealth Citizen Journalist reporting from Bethlehem in the Free State.
Dr Aaron Motsoaledi rubs his forehead and repositions himself in his chair, leaning forward as if to make sure the point come across clearly: 'I will say it upfront. There is no way National Health Insurance (NHI) will function anywhere if the public health system is not functioning well.'
Mayor Patricia de Lille has admitted that the City's janitorial services in informal services needed to be jacked up and her office has taken over the monitoring of this service.
The head of the ailing Gauteng Health Department, Dr Nomonde Xundu, is reported to have requested that she be relieved of her duties. Her move is seen as an admission of her failure to manage the distressed provincial Health Department. But Xundu denies any reports that she is leaving.
Story by Mtshana Mvlisi, an OurHealth Citizen Journalist based in the OR Tambo District in the Eastern Cape.
He cuts a lone figure in the fading dusk light, clutching a laptop bag in one hand and an oversized grass basket in the other. His salt and pepper hair slightly disheveled after a long day, the Eastern Cape health's head honcho Siva Pillay looks over his shoulder and grins: 'I should have come in my other bakkie, I could have shown you those bullet holes'.
South Africa's Medicines Control Council (MCC) has confirmed that it will continue to deny compassionate access to a TB drug that for many drug resistant patients is their last hope.
The Eastern Cape Health and Treasury MECs have been given an ultimatum to either reply to a set of questions related to the staffing crises at Madwaleni and Livingstone hospitals, or face litigation.
CAPE TOWN - Health Director-General Precious Matsoso has launched a strong appeal to the private health sector to come up with good 'contracting models' whereby the state could as an example partner with private doctors to deliver services.
CAPE TOWN ' South Africa cannot afford to shy away from the uncomfortable truth that poor regulatory control of private healthcare and weak financing was punishing the poor, Health minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi told a meeting of private hospitals yesterday.
CAPE TOWN - A landmark daily janitorial service for communal toilets in the City's informal settlements - launched with great fanfare in May by Mayor Patricia de Lille - has come to a grinding halt.
'Many people think that you go to hospice to die, but hospice is not about death at all, it is about preserving the quality of life,' said former Bafana Bafana captain, Lucas Radebe.
