SAHRC asked to investigate idle cancer machines
The SA Human Rights Commission has been asked for a second time to investigate a decision by the KwaZulu-Natal health department to leave two state of the art cancer radiotherapy machines lying idle.
SAHRC spokesman Isaac Mangena on Tuesday night confirmed that the Democratic Alliance had lodged a complaint over the two machines that were installed at Durban’s Addington Hospital at a cost of R120 million.
“I would like to confirm that we have received this complaint and we are investigating. [I would] Also [like] to indicate that this is a second complaint on the same matter,” he said.
In July 2013, Professor Ammo Jordaan, who was the head of oncology at Addington Hospital, also lodged a complaint against the KwaZulu-Natal health department over the machines.
Mangena did not indicate what had come of the investigation following the complaint lodged by Jordaan.
The two machines – Varian Rapid Arc Linear Accelerators – were installed in 2010 by the company Tecmed and part of the R120 million tender it was awarded included a five-year R26 million maintenance contract. The maintenance contract had been reduced from price tag of R33 million.
After the machines were installed, the waiting times for cancer patients to receive radiotherapy treatment at Addington Hospital dropped from eight months to two weeks.
However, KwaZulu-Natal health MEC Sibongiseni Dhlomo has refused to pay the R430,000 monthly maintenance contract, claiming that the department was supplied old machines and not the new ones they were promised.
Jordaan, who headed Addington’s oncology department from 1980 and quit in 2012 over the failure to keep the machines operational, said that up to 100 patients daily could receive radiotherapy when the machines were up and running.
Jordaan previously told the now defunct South African Press Association that he was surprised to hear that they were being told the machines were old.
“They were state-of-the-art in the world,” he said, adding that he had seen the machines for the first time in 2008.
Three forensic audits — two initiated by the KwaZulu-Natal health department and one initiated by the national health department, and an ongoing investigation since 2009 by the Hawks have failed to prove any alleged corruption.
None of the forensic audits have seen the light of day and the Hawks have yet to present a prosecutable case to the Director of Public Prosecutions.
The machines have not been operational since mid-2014 and Tecmed, the company that maintained them, has refused to get them up and running until the department pays the maintenance contract.