Industry News

Private Healthcare Headlines

23 January 2009

In Categories: Industry News , Industry News > General

compiled by Lucas Malambe

This week's biggest headline is the Cholera Desk, an initiative of major stakeholders in the private healthcare sector of South Africa.

The Cholera Desk is hale and hearty

Major players in the private healthcare industry of SA had joined forces to help government deal with the cholera outbreak. The Private Sector Task Team has established The Cholera Desk to co-ordinate the sector’s response to the cholera outbreak that has hit our Republic especially Mpumalanga and Limpopo. The Desk is currently coordinated through the Hospital Association of SA (HASA). The Cholera Desk will on behalf of all participants facilitate the private sectors response in regards to requests for assistance from the public sector, and will be doing so in conjunction with provincial and national departments of health. I am contacting you on behalf of the Private Sector Task Team to request your support in the form of a contribution towards our combined efforts.

1. Interventions put in place in Mpumalanga:

• The provincial authorities have already erected a tent to deal with overflow of patients at Matikwane hospital. The tents and stretchers were provided by South African Military Health Services.
• The Municipality will continue to supply water tanks to affected areas.
• The provincial authorities will intensify health education and social mobilization in the affected area.
• A team of expects have been deployed in the area to assist with case management.
• The province have also received additional resources donated by Red Cross; 500 blankets, 50 buckets, 50 trampolines, 190 mattresses, 100 cholera kits with drip stands, 1000 Oral Rehydration Solution, 20 chemical toilets and 20 health promoters.

2. Additional Resources required by Mpumalanga:

Over and above the interventions that have been set in motion by a joint operation including Red Cross, SA Military Health Services and the Department of Health more still needs to be done. Below are the needs of the Mpumalanga Department of Health:

3. Additional Resources Required by Limpopo

Businesses and individuals who require additional information about The Cholera Desk may please contact The Hospital Association of SA offices and Lindie Moss and Lucas Malambe at 011 478 0156, or contact@hasa.co.za will be happy to answer any questions you may have. We can all take pride in being good corporate citizens.
Please know that all contributions you make will positively impact on The Cholera Desk and the people in need of  medical treatment. The PTT thank you for your thoughtful consideration of our request.

SA's hidden cholera crisis, by Nkosona Lekotjolo & Werner Swart: The Times, 23 January 2008

MORE than 30 South Africans have died and more than 3 000 are suffering from cholera. The outbreak has highlighted the government's failure to extend basic municipal services, such as clean tap water, to hundreds of thousands of rural people who are forced to draw water from cholera- infected rivers. The worst-affected provinces are Mpumalanga, where 19 people have died, and Limpopo, where 10 people have died from the easily curable disease. Three people have died of cholera in Africa's richest province, Gauteng, since the outbreak began in November. Phuti Seloba, spokesman of the Limpopo health department, said 85 new cholera cases had been reported in the province. He said this brought the number of people affected to 2 749, with 10 confirmed deaths in the province. His counterpart in Mpumalanga, Mpho Gabashane, was not available for comment. To gain an insight into the factors fuelling the outbreak, THE TIMES visited Mpumalanga and found that: the failure to extend basic municipal services to villagers had cost lives and put thousands at risk; the frail healthcare system was struggling to cope with the outbreak, which doctors fear could worsen; and, scenes that shocked the world after the Zimbabwe cholera outbreak were playing out in South Africa. The worst-affected areas in Mpumalanga fall under the Ehlanzeni district municipality, which includes Mbombela and Bushbuckridge. Villagers in Mpumalanga continue to drink, cook with and bathe in water drawn from the cholera-contaminated Ngwaritsi River, near Bushbuckridge. The river supplies water to thousands of people living in the Marite, Mkhuhlu, Cork and Goroman villages around Hazyview and Bushbuckridge. The villagers said that, though they knew that they could become sick, or die, by taking water from the river, it was their only source of water. Many residents of the villages do not have running water and the few that have said they had not had water since November, when the supply was stopped. Every morning, the small Marite Clinic is crowded with cholera patients asking for treatment. They are often referred to the better-equipped Madikwane Hospital, about 15km away. The villagers complained that one ambulance serves at least five villages, which are kilometres apart. They said it normally took more than five hours for the ambulance to collect cholera patients unable to walk.
Mike Waters, the Democratic Alliance spokesman on health, said the Health Department's failure to arrest the cholera outbreak, as well the government's failure to eradicate the bucket-toilet system, was "another example of the hollow promises the ANC has made". He said the bucket system was degrading, adding it was shocking that former president Thabo Mbeki promised in 2007 that the bucket system would be a thing of the past before the end of the year, but nothing has been done.

The cost of murder, by Lee Rondganger: The Star, 21 January 2009

ON FRIDAY nights ward 163 at Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital in Johannesburg swells with the injured and the maimed. Patients fill the ward with an assortment of injuries: head wounds, broken limbs and stab and gunshot wounds. Professor Jacques Goosen, the head of the trauma unit, said the cost of murder to the public health sector is enormous. Between January and September last year, the Charlotte Maxeke Hospital treated 636 gunshot wounds and 890 stab victims. Goosen says that just treating a gunshot wound in the casualty ward can cost up to R15 000. Just treating a victim in theatre for major surgery costs R28 249 an hour, according to the Charlotte Maxeke Hospital's crude costing system which includes the services of a doctor and specialist physician. Surgery to stabilise a patient, Goosen says, can take anything between one to five hours. In some instances, patients are stabilised in surgery and taken to the Intensive Care Unit - at a cost of about R2 618 for 12 hours or R5 236 per day. Sagie Pillay, the former CEO of Charlotte Maxeke Hospital, said that in a matter of hours the cost of treating a patient could be anything between R50 000 and R300 000 depending on the injuries, because treating a person injured in the cardiac area required expertise. Besides the financial costs, Pillay said there were other implications such the loss of confidence in the public health system created by the direct impact of treating gunshot and stab victims. Pillay said that many of these violent incidents could have been prevented because a lot of the time it was linked to alcohol abuse and anti-social behaviour. He added that the money spent on such cases could otherwise be used to assist people with surgery and improving the wards.

Oxygen deal 'will not affect members,'by Neesa Moodley-Isaacs: Personal Finance, 17 January 2008

OLD Mutual's recently announced sale of its medical scheme administrator Old Mutual Healthcare to Lethimvula Investments (which also owns Medscheme) will not affect members of Oxygen Medical Scheme, according to the scheme's principal officer, James van Vught. Van Vught said Oxygen was an independent entity which had an administration contract with Old Mutual Healthcare. The sale would not affect the scheme's board of trustees or any decisions the board had taken regarding the scheme's administration. Oxygen's trustees put the scheme's administration contract out to tender in October last year. The tender process will be completed by the end of the month and a new administrator could take over within four or five months. Dewald Dempers, the chief executive of Lethimvula, confirmed that Medscheme had participated in the tender and said the purchase of Old Mutual Healthcare would go ahead regardless of the tender. He said that Lethimvula had already consolidated its two administration companies, Medscheme and Rowan Angel, and although it made commercial sense to amalgamate Medscheme and Old Mutual Healthcare in the medium- to long-term, it would consult with Old Mutual Healthcare's clients first.
Oxygen will continue to offer its current rewards programme and premiums for 2009 will be unaffected by the tender process. Claims should be submitted to Old Mutual Healthcare until further notice. The trustees of Oxygen initially tried to open an administration tender at the end of 2007 but were promptly faced with legal action by Old Mutual. Van Vught said the scheme did not recommence the tender process at the time because Old Mutual Healthcare had entered into negotiations with Lethimvula Investments to combine their administration and managed care businesses. Oxygen's solvency ratio at the end of 2007 was 17.6 percent (below the 25 percent required by law). Van Vught said the trustees were hoping to negotiate an administration and managed care deal that would save costs and improve the scheme's finances.
 

News In Brief and Commentary

'People will neglect healthcare,'Business Report, 21 January 2009

THE World Health Organisation has warned that the global financial crisis may spark a rise in mental illness and health problems as people turn to alcohol, tobacco and drugs to get through the downturn. The UN agency's Director-General Margaret Chan said at the launch of a conference on the financial crisis' effects on health that this had happened in the past. She said that in times of economic crisis, people tended to forego private care and made more use of publicly financed services, adding that many country's public health systems were already "overstretched and underfunded." Chan also warned that periods of economic instability increased the risk that people would neglect healthcare, with prevention falling by the wayside. Richard Newfarmer, the World Bank's special representative to the UN and World Trade Organisation, said nearly 60 million people would be gripped by poverty if economic growth in developing countries halved during 2009.

SA needs more nurses, SAPA, 20 January 2009

SOUTH Africa is failing to produce more nurses to deal with its health demands, according to the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (Denosa). The trade union said the closure of some nursing colleges by the government, citing "funding" as a reason, did not assist in the production of nurses. Denosa called on government to re-open the training colleges that were closed, to accommodate those who were interested in pursuing this career. The union said one of the contributing factors to the shortage was that school-leavers lacked interest in becoming nurses because of the unsavoury working environments that nurses face on a daily basis, and added that poor salaries also drove nurses away from the profession and the country. Denosa called on the state to improve health services nationwide.