[As you can see, South Africa is slowly but surely following the pattern of the rest of Africa, as services start the slow slide into collapse. The Eastern Cape has a horrific track record. Newspapers were saying that billions of rands had been wasted – generally. Of all the ANC-run provinces, the Eastern Cape (which incidentally is the home of the Xhosas and where Mandela and Co. come from) is a cess-pool of waste and failure. Jan]

The Eastern Cape health department vowed on Thursday to prosecute officials responsible for letting clinics in the East London area run out of chronic medicines.

“We view this as gross negligence,” departmental spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo said. “We are going to charge people. There are people that are going to face the music.”

Kupelo was going to fly to Port Elizabeth on Thursday afternoon in a plane contracted to the department to pick up supplies from the provincial medicine depot and take them back to East London for distribution.

He said the department learned on Wednesday that 10 clinics in the East London area had run out of medication for chronic illnesses such as tuberculosis and diabetes.

Checks are being made at other clinics in the province, and if there are more shortages, the drugs will be distributed by helicopter.

“We don’t want anything threatening the service we are delivering, and we don’t want to compromise the health of our people,” he said.

Clinic supervisors have to be held accountable, Kupelo said.

“As much as we sitting here in Bisho are responsible for this department, the MEC [Monwabisi Goqwana] cannot be expected to be everywhere in the province. He’s not a holy spirit.” — Sapa

Source: Daily Mail & Guardian
URL: http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/br…/p>