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Patients at the Steve Biko Hospital are suffering as all non-urgent operations have been cancelled after air-conditioning at the theatres broke down on Wednesday last week.

With the hot weather experienced lately, the risk of infection is too high to do surgery without air-conditioning as this can lead to infection.

I have received complaints about patients who have been in the hospital for more than month who are waiting for their surgery.

It is yet another maintenance failure by the Department of Infrastructure Development (DID), which keeps appointing incompetent contractors who can’t do the job.

In this case, the first contractor couldn’t fix the chillers, and a new contractor had to be appointed yesterday. The hospital hopes that the chillers can be fixed by Friday this week.

This hospital has also suffered from broken lifts which disrupted surgery as patients could not be transported between floors.

The DA has long proposed that maintenance be devolved to major hospitals like Steve Biko which can do a better job than the dysfunctional and corrupt DID.

Meanwhile, surgeons stand idle and the surgery waiting lists get longer, while patients suffer in wards instead of being discharged after their surgery.

Issued by Jack Bloom MPL - DA Gauteng Shadow MEC for Health