Patients at the Bheki Mlangeni Hospital in Soweto have not had proper laundry for more than a month, and sanitary conditions have worsened with piles of dirty laundry.
Patients sleep on plastic liners and bring their own blankets to keep warm.
This linen shortage is caused by broken machines at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital (CHBH) laundry which are used for laundry at Bheki Mlangeni Hospital as well.
Last month, CHBH was also affected by a clean laundry shortage, and last year in November the situation was so bad that non-emergency operations were cancelled.
Despite these laundry problems which have also hit other Gauteng public hospitals, Gauteng Health MEC Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko has replied to my questions in the Gauteng Legislature that since January last year:
“The department had no laundry shortages; there is extra linen and disposal linen for theatres.”
She claims there “was no effect on patients” and “no planned operations were cancelled.”
This is an appalling denial of a persistent problem experienced by many staff and patients.
The MEC admits, however, that there have been “multiple breakdowns” of laundry equipment at the five provincial laundries.
There were breakdowns with tunnel washers at the Bara, Johannesburg, Edenvale, Dunswart, and Masakhane laundries.
Their equipment is outdated, and spares are not readily available, so repair times are long.
The DA will continue to push for a review of the unreliable provincial laundries, and more use of cost-efficient private laundries to ensure that hospitals never run short of essential clean laundry.