The DA’s spokesperson for the health department Patricia Kopane says she found nothing wrong when she visited the Fort England and Tower Psychiatric Hospital in the Eastern Cape earlier on Monday and cast doubt on media reports sounding the alarm on their conditions. She said Tower Psychiatric Hospital was clean and well maintained, with quality food in the kitchens. Staff at both facilities should be applauded for doing what they could with limited resources, she said. Kopane questioned the veracity of a recent report carried by Rapport, which drew attention to dilapidated infrastructure, inadequate nutrition and inappropriate isolation of psychiatric patients at Tower Hospital. The report also raised questions about the number of deaths recorded at the facility, quoting psychiatrist Kiran Sukeri, who alleged that documents had been altered to hide the true scale of fatalities. The Eastern Cape health department has refuted claims of a cover-up; Sukeri has laid complaints with the ...
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