State collapse hurts the most vulnerable

The high cost of quality healthcare and its stark contrast with the appalling quality of public healthcare in the Eastern Cape leaves one feeling helpless and hopeless.

Over the years, we have reported on many  harrowing experiences of patients at public clinics and hospitals.

Poor treatment, shortages of staff, medicine and equipment -- all are well documented. 

We have also reported extensively on a ballooning number of patients who, after suffering ill-treatment or neglect, take the department to court and win damages. 

So bad is the situation that the provincial government has a standing budget set aside to pay its medicolegal claims, which by now run to billions of rands. 

The cases of medical malpractice have created an industry of lawyers who focus on claims against the department of health.

It is crippling a health service that was already struggling to provide services to the most vulnerable across vast rural distances. 

Yet, there is usually light in the darkest of places, and options like Transnet’s Phelophepa II give a glimmer of hope that, once in a year,  quality medical help can be accessed by the poor.

The train does an annual stop in different towns around the country and it targets mainly the underprivileged, who are yearning for their services.

Patients can access much-needed primary health checks like eye tests, and receive prescription glasses for just R30. 

Other offerings include a dental clinic that provides free screenings and education. Dental fillings and cleaning are offered at R10 per procedure. 

The service, which has been on offer since 1994, has become increasingly trusted by the public, with scores travelling long distances to access it. 

But on Monday this trust was broken.

Hundreds of people had travelled, some of them from far away, to Mount Ruth in Mdantsane, where the train was meant to be stationed for 11 days, offering its services. 

It never arrived. Patients, clinging to hope, chose to sleep at the station rather than lose their place in the queue.

Phelophepa manager Dr Thabiso Manamela said the delays were caused by railway line and cable theft. 

This is a distressing development. 

It cannot be that people are denied critical services like these because the state is incapable of maintaining basic infrastructure like railway lines. 

Those sleeping at the train station are elders and children, already unwell, desperate for its services.

They don't deserve to be humiliated like this.

The president and the ruling party need to urgently stop the collapse of state infrastructure around the country. It can no longer be tolerated. 

DispatchLIVE