Health seeks cash injection

[caption id="attachment_185414" align="alignright" width="300"] Provincial health spokesman Sizwe Kupelo
Picture: DispatchLIVE[/caption]

Department starting financial year with more than R1.4bn in debt

If the Eastern Cape Department of Health does not receive a serious cash injection, public health services will be reduced, spokesman Sizwe Kupelo said yesterday. He said that the department was starting the financial year R1.4- billion in debt, which did not include the R200-million of unbudgeted medical legal claims that must still be paid out.

“The lawyers are taking all our money,” Kupelo said.

He said that in the past year medical inflation at 7.1% had overtaken the department’s increase in budget of 5.7%.

“The only logical outcome is that the department will have accruals. Add to that the medical legal claims and you have a compounded situation.”

He said the national Treasury and Department of Health both agreed that the Eastern Cape department was critically under-funded.