The Democratic Alliance (DA) has reported the Eastern Cape Department of Health to the South African Human Rights Commission for once again failing to provide the Oncology Departments at Gqeberha’s Provincial Hospital and Livingstone Hospital with life-saving chemotherapy drugs.
This ongoing crisis is not only jeopardising the physical health of cancer patients but is also taking a severe toll on their emotional and mental wellbeing.
How does one explain to the mother of a 14-year-old boy that his treatment cannot continue because the department’s non-payment has led the supplier to close their account? How does a doctor respond to a heartfelt letter from a 33-year-old woman, diagnosed with a curable form of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, who is begging for treatment so she can raise her three-year-old child?
These are the impossible choices our healthcare workers are forced to face daily. Meanwhile, senior officials sit comfortably in air-conditioned offices, use state-owned vehicles for private errands, and continue to protect a bloated payroll of politically connected individuals in non-essential posts.
Across the province, emotionally and physically exhausted doctors and nurses do their best in facilities that often lack even the most basic medicines and surgical equipment. This is no longer a cash flow problem. It is a gross violation of human rights.
Rather than discrediting legitimate news reports as fake and launching witch hunts against those trying to keep patients informed, the Department should be focused on getting its house in order.
The collapse of the Eastern Cape Department of Health cannot be allowed to continue. Urgent intervention is required. The DA has called for the Department to be placed under administration. That the ANC-led government refuses to act speaks volumes about its arrogance and disdain for the people it is meant to serve.
I have submitted a formal complaint to the South African Human Rights Commission on the basis that the denial of chemotherapy treatment violates Section 27 of the Constitution, which guarantees access to health care services and obliges the state to take reasonable measures to fulfil this right. It further infringes the right to dignity (Section 10) and the right to life (Section 11).
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This is not just administrative negligence; it is a breach of the fundamental rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights.
I have also written to the Eastern Cape MEC for Health, Hon. Ntandokazi Capa, to demand a time-bound plan for the sustainable provision of cancer treatment.
It is intolerable that politics and cadre protection continue to take precedence over the lives of patients.