Thousands of vacant posts at KZN health department
KwaZulu-Natal's provincial health department will need funding to the tune of R1.1 billion while at the same time ending the current financial year with almost 2,000 more vacant posts.
This emerged from briefing to the provincial health portfolio committee meeting in Pietermaritzburg on Tuesday by newly appointed acting chief financial officer Phumelele Shezi.
According to Shezi, the department would have a total shortfall of R1.8 billion and would need an injection of at least R1.1 billion in the current financial year to sustain its current services.
A document with figures released at the meeting revealed that the department had 7,583 vacant posts in April 2016, but this had climbed to 8,688 by last month while there were predicted to be 9,355 vacant posts by April 2017 - meaning that 12 percent of all posts in the department would be vacant.
Critically, the same document claims the reduction in posts would see a 1,751 reduction in clinical posts, but only a loss of 418 administrative posts during the same time period.
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Clinical posts are those of doctors, nurses and other staff directly involved in the treating of patients. During the same period, the department would see its salary bill drop slightly.
Shezi said that the big driver of spiralling costs in the department had been the increased roll out of antiretrovirals (ARV), increased costs related to blood tests billed by the National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS) and the increased costs of medicines.
Since September last year, the government has moved to a policy of treating all patients who test HIV positive. Previously, ARV treatment was only available to HIV patients who had a CD4 count of 500 or less.
With regards to blood testing, previously the NHLS billed provincial health departments a flat rate, but have moved to a system of billing for each and every blood test.
Shezi said that increasing electricity costs and a weakening rand had also impacted expenditure in the department.
The revised budget for the department's revised 2016/17 budget shows that it will spend R1.35 billion on medicines and R1.37 billion on ARVs and R1.49 billion for blood tests. A further R613 million is ecpected to have been spent on security and R605 million on infection control and cleaning.
The Democratic Alliance's health spokesman said that the figures made for "bleak reading" and questioned how this would impact patients attending public health facilities.