Pelononi and Universitas hospitals in the Free State have received a shot in the arm with a donation of surgical equipment worth R500 000 from the Mediclinic Southern Africa.
Health MEC, Montsheng Tsiu acknowledged the collaboration between the health department and Mediclinic to help to improve the lives of patients in the province. Tsiu says the equipment will help the department.
“The value of these apparatus is half a million and it’s an important gesture. It’s a huge donation and will go a long way in assisting the department of health in dealing with the backlogs that comes to the operations especially the orthopaedic operations.”
Mediclinic Southern Africa says their partnership with the Free State department of health is expected to go a long way in cementing the relations between the private and public health sector.
Mediclinic Industry Affairs Executive, Bob Govender, says they realised that they have a surplus of surgical equipment while state facilities have shortages of the equipment.
“We also realised that within the state facilities there are shortage of equipment; we had a surplus of equipment. Rather than just keep it and wait for when it would be utilized, we thought there’s an ideal opportunity to strengthen our partnership by the donating to the Free State department of health so that they could use this orthopaedic equipment for theatres they would be able to assist more patients. The access to equipment means that we could address patients immediately and prevent further backlog from happening.”
Head of department of health, Dr David Motau says the new health equipment will improve the current backlog facing the department.
“But in terms of the backlogs we must have doctors, we must have nurses as I’ve said and it’s a reality we do have. We have backlogs in terms of your cataract, in terms of athroplastics, we also backlogs in terms of spinal operations which we are beginning to deal with. As I was saying to the other colleague is that we are also doing what we call blitz which if you like it’s an attack on one area to say let deal with this high impact good results good outcomes, so we do this in some weekends we started at Pelonomi and we will be rolling out all the time.”
The donated equipment will also assist the young doctors and nurses with the practical aspects of their work.
