Surgery backlogs soar at Bara hospital as thousands of patients suffer

Insufficient theatre time, non-availability of ICU beds, power outages and the prolonged closure of the Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital trauma unit due to last year’s fire are some of the reasons Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto has developed a huge surgery waiting list.

The number of patients waiting for operations at Bara has jumped from 7,288 last year to 11,194 — an increase of more than 3,900 cases — with some patients informed they will have to wait until December 2026 for surgery.

The crisis was revealed last week by Gauteng health MEC Nomathemba Mokgethi in response to questions posed by DA Gauteng health spokesperson Jack Bloom, a member of the provincial legislature.

According to the information declared by Mokgethi, there are 3,394 cataract patients who will have to wait for a year to regain their sight, while more than 700 acute care and trauma surgery patients have a wait of six months to a year.

On August 31, 622 children had to wait a year for orthopaedic surgery, 1,304 had a six-month wait for general surgery, 243 men suffering with enlarged prostate glands had a wait of two to three years, while 41 others diagnosed with prostate cancer had to wait six months. Six children with brain tumours had to wait four months for surgery.

The worst waiting time is for 1,777 people who need hip and knee replacements, with the backlog resulting in a wait of four-and-a-half years.

While Mokgethi said the Covid-19 pandemic and the fire at Charlotte Maxeke hospital were partial causes of the growing waiting lists, Bloom pointed out that better management could help fix some of the other identified problems such as broken equipment, non-functioning autoclaves and dysfunctional boilers.

Adding to the surgery backlogs is that many public health patients had to wait a long time to be diagnosed, so their suffering during the extended delay is immense, Bloom said.

“Some waiting lists only get shorter because patients die while waiting. Surgery blitzes in the evenings and on weekends will help to cut the lists, and private hospitals can be paid to do surgery for public patients,” Bloom said, explaining some of the solutions Gauteng health management could resort to to address the situation.

According to Mokgethi, the reasons contributing to the backlogs are: insufficient theatre time, a lack of available post-op ICU/HCU beds, non-functioning equipment, power outages and non-functioning surgical theatres at the nearby Bheki Mlangeni District Hospital where elective cataract and minor surgery can be done.

This was compounded by the cancellation or postponing of 1,786 operations in the past year “for various reasons”.

In June Bara hospital CEO Dr Nkele Lesia said during an oversight visit by the Human Rights Commission that emergency surgeries were prioritised as the patient load was too heavy for their 43 surgical theatres.

“We don’t cancel any emergency cases and the reasons for cancellation are many — some of them are patient related, which we are not in control of. For example, if the person is not fit for a surgery,” she explained.

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