Health workers to protest against budget cut
Anso Thom
May 08 2007 at 11:46AM

The next round in the battle against bed cuts at Western Cape hospitals will take place at the provincial legislature on Tuesday when health workers hold a protest to oppose the multimillion rand budget cuts announced in March.

The protest, organised by the Groote Schuur Hospital Health Crisis Committee, will take place before hearings on the provincial department of social development's budget. Doctors, unions and other stakeholders are planning to make submissions.

Unions, community forums, doctors, nurses and allied health workers are expected to support the protest action outside the Wale Street legislature.

\"Health services in this province fail to meet the enormous health needs of the people,\" the crisis committee said.


'The budget cuts will not only affect tertiary hospitals'
\"Health workers managed an ongoing crisis in which patients wait in impossibly long clinic queues, languish for hours or days in casualty waiting for beds and suffer long delays before receiving necessary treatment, specialist assessment or lifesaving surgery.

\"In this context we are appalled and outraged at the proposed health cuts which will affect not only tertiary hospitals, but also several secondary and district hospitals.\"

Health MEC Pierre Uys confirmed in March that R19-million and R11-million would be cut from the budgets of Groote Schuur and Tygerberg hospitals respectively.

Senior specialists at Groote Schuur sounded the alarm before the budget announcements saying the intended cuts would spell disaster.

Spokesperson for the crisis committee Lydia Cairncross said if these cuts went through they would result in the closure of hospital beds and specialist and other out-patient clinics in the province.

\"The budget cuts will not only affect tertiary hospitals, but health centres throughout the province,\" Cairncross warned.

A petition, to be handed to Uys, calls for an immediate moratorium on all health cuts. It also calls for a consultative conference on the 2010 Comprehensive Services Plan which the committee claims will close down several existing services.

The health department has also come under criticism for failing to deliver on its commitment to start building hospitals in Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain.

These hospitals would have relieved the pressure on severely overburdened hospitals such as GF Jooste.

\"Conditions in the public sector are such that we cannot afford to lose even one bed, a single clinic or a single health worker at any level of care,\" the crisis committee added.