DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH FAIL TO DELIVER

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH FAIL TO DELIVER

BY BRIAN KAJENGO

The Mpumalanga health department should better named the Department of Investigation, as it does not seem to have any clue about the state of health care delivery across the province, and promises the one investigation after the other into poor service delivery.

 Yet another report of medicine shortages and the poor state of health infrastructure surfaced, this time about the dilapidated Jerusalem clinic in Mbombela – and the only official response was that the department was unaware of this, and would investigate.

 Promising investigations into service delivery failures have become common with the department, yet no outcomes are ever announced or any definitive steps to address the cause. These promises made purely to divert attention from the department’s own failings.

The only investigation that long ago launched and concluded, should have addressed the following:

·         Do officials in the health department have any knowledge whatsoever about the state of Mpumalanga’s health care facilities, and whether people’s needs cared for?

·         How is it possible that critical infrastructure failure and drug shortages are not reported, or are the reports simply being ignored by an incompetent and bloated bureaucracy?

·         How does the health department monitor and oversee its own delivery objectives, and why is non-performance by officials not acted upon?

It is clear that the health department is in urgent need of a strategic overhaul, and that the centralised control over and management of the province’s health facilities has failed

Decision-making and procurement must be decentralised, and the unspoken but strictly enforced ban on managers and CEOs speaking to the media and the public over delivery issues for the sake of transparency and accountability lifted.

 A culture of fear will not address the critical shortcomings of Mpumalanga’s health care system, only one of compassion and cooperation