Everything from a shortage of supplies, staff and security to complaints about regular visits from snakes as a result of poorly maintained clinic premises have become part of the daily struggles of health-care facilities across the Bay, according to the province’s health portfolio committee.

Public health facilities and services “are a mess” in the metro, the chairperson of the Eastern Cape Legislature’s health portfolio committee, Mxolisi Dimaza, said at its feedback meeting at Livingstone Hospital on Friday...