Care cut back for 81 patients

These East Cape Frail Care residents will go to homes for aged, disabled – Bhisho official

Eighty-one of the close to 240 patients at the only two fully state- funded frail care centres in Port Elizabeth will be moved to homes for the aged and homes for the disabled.

This is because the Department of Social Development has classified them as no longer in need of 24-hour care, provincial department head Stanley Khanyile has said in papers before the Port Elizabeth High Court.

Khanyile said a survey of other provinces revealed that nobody was paying close to R18 000 a patient for 24-hour care.

• Life Esidimeni Centres in Limpopo received R3 500 a patient;
• In Mpumalanga, frail care facilities received R4 800 a patient;
• In Gauteng, frail care patients were subsidised at a cost of R4 000 a month;
• In KwaZulu-Natal, patients had a R5 000 subsidy; and
• In the Western Cape, the frail care subsidy was R4 065.

Judge Elna Revelas postponed the matter to May 25.

The Frail Care Crisis Collective’s Gerhardt Loock said: “The department is making this all about money, but it is about so much more.”