Northern Cape health department faces R1.4bn in medico-legal claims
The Northern Cape health department is struggling to fill specialist posts, threatening its capacity to provide care to patients, Parliament heard on Wednesday.Parliament’s portfolio committee on health has asked all the health MECs to report on the state of public hospitals in their province.The failings in the province’s provision of public healthcare were driven home by the department’s head, Stephen Jonkers, who told MPs that the department faced more than R1.4bn in medico-legal claims. Many of these claims related to cerebral palsy cases, some of which dated back to 2004, he said.These cases reflect weaknesses across the province’s health system, which has only one tertiary facility — Kimberley Hospital — to which all complicated pregnancy cases are referred, medical director Dr Dion Thys said. "Take a lack of skills, late presentation at antenatal clinics, add long distances and you have a lot of snow-balling issues," he said on the sidelines of the meeting.Thys earlier told t...
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