Two years after it was first announced, construction on an acute mental health unit at Port Elizabeth’s Provincial Hospital is expected to wrap up at the end of April.
The establishment of the unit followed the deaths of three psychiatric patients in as many months at Livingstone Hospital’s casualty unit in 2017.
At the time, Livingstone did not have a psychiatric unit even though psychiatric patients had to be admitted there pending their referral to Dora Nginza Hospital.
The Provincial Hospital ward, based in P-block, was renovated at a cost of R10m.
The tender process for the work had to be restarted after irregularities were found.
The Eastern Cape has just two treatment centres for drug rehabilitation.
There are 20 beds for adults at Fort England in Makhanda and 20 beds for adolescents at the Ernest Malgas Centre in New Brighton.
The new ward will have 30 beds and the unit will be staffed by 10 specialist psychiatric nurses, six staff nurses and eight nursing assistants working in shifts.
One psychiatrist, a clinical psychologist, a social worker and an occupational therapist would also attend to patients.
Provincial health department spokesperson Lwandile Sicwetsha said the renovations should be completed within the next three weeks.
“The reason for the delay was that, given that we were attending to the upgrades, a decision was made to do some additional maintenance work before patients are moved in.
“We believe that doing the necessary work now will minimise inconvenience to patients later on,” he said.
In March 2019, the South African Human Rights Commission called for progress reports from the department on a number of troubling issues in the mental health sector.
The province’s mental health directorate was placed under administration by the minister of health late in 2018.
The move came after health ombudsman Malegapuru Makgoba stated in a report on Tower Psychiatric Hospital in Fort Beaufort that systemic failures should be corrected.