Nearly a year after the Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital caught fire, the national health department has now taken over the institution's rehabilitation project.  

Since the fire that destroyed parts of the hospital last year, it has still not been fixed and is not fully open for patient care. 

On Thursday, Gauteng government spokesperson Thabo Masebe said they had to bring in the national government to ensure that the process of repairing the hospital was accelerated.  

Masebe said one major cause of the delays was that there was no agreement between health and infrastructure development departments.

"The Department of Health did not agree on the scope of work and the budget proposed by the Department of Infrastructure Development."

Masebe said he had to mediate between the two departments.

"Even that was taking too long to resolve and that is why, in December, we decided… to look at other options within the law."

Premier David Makhura in February transferred the hospital from the infrastructure department to health so as to fast-track the repair process. The transfer is limited to remedial work in the hospital. 

Masebe said that, because of capacity issues in the Gauteng health department, the national department would lead the hospital's rehabilitation. 

He said tight controls had to be placed on the project to ensure the corruption that happened with the renovations of the Ashanti Gold Hospital didn’t happen again.  

Last week, nine officials were suspended on the recommendation of the Special Investigative Unit over the R588-million renovation at the Ashanti Gold Hospital.

The renovations were supposed to add an additional 180 beds to care for Covid-19 patients. It was budgeted for R50-million, but the costs ballooned.  

Masebe said: "As we were dealing with the delays in the remedial work, we also had to deal with this issue. This will obviously impact on our capacity to deliver in the shortest possible time."

'Accelerated approach'

He added that police were still investigating the cause of the fire. 

Ayanda Dakela, chief director for infrastructure and facilities management in the national health department said, so far, they had assessed the building and identified areas that needed urgent attention.  

"We have developed a project plan that has been given to both the minister of health and the premier," he said. 

Dakela said one of the immediate concerns was fixing the hospital's parking facilities.   

"We have identified that there are structural issues that have to be attended to. These structural damages… they are within blocks 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. We have a plan to sort that out as soon as possible."

He said they also wanted to analyse hospital equipment and see if it could be fixed. 

Dakela said they hoped to complete renovations by the end of 2023. The initial completion date was 2027. 

"The approach will be an accelerated approach to make sure we cover as many things as possible in a short space of time."

Hospital CEO Gladys Bogoshi said that since the fire and the Covid-19 pandemic, they had lost many specialists - especially nurses. She said they hoped to attract them back to the hospital as the rehabilitation process went on.