Please click here for a soundbite by Siviwe Gwarube MP, the DA Shadow Minister of Health.
Last month, I submitted an application to the Department of Health to access Covid-19 modeling that the South African government was using to prepare the health system and the breakdown of provincial statistics on infections, recoveries, fatalities and capacity of each sub-district using the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA Act 2000).
This request has now been denied on spurious grounds, citing that some of the information is now in the public domain and the rest of the information requested cannot be divulged based on section 44 of the Act.
This section lists conditions under which access to information can be denied, however this is extremely broad. It ranges from refusals on the basis that information made public could frustrate a policy making process or inhibit candid communication within the public entity in question. The response from the department makes no mention on what basis this information is denied.
It is for that reason that the DA will launching an internal appeal to compel the department to reveal the provincial breakdown of infections, projected cases, recoveries, fatalities and most importantly what the health system capacity looks like per sub-district in the province.
Section 74 of the PAIA Act makes provision for the requester of the information to appeal the decision by the information officer should it be deemed unfair.
In the last 3 months since South Africa announced it first case of Covid-19, the DA has appealed to government to be transparent with the data they are looking at to inform the response to this pandemic. It has been a battle to get cooperation in this regard. This latest refusal to publish a detailed breakdown of the state of readiness in the provinces and information that will assist in painting an accurate picture of how the provinces are dealing with this pandemic, is deeply concerning. What is the department of health hiding? Why can’t South Africa be informed of bed and health worker capacity per sub-district in order to gauge how prepared each area is for the respective peaks?
By Dr Zweli Mkhize’s own admission, South Africa only has 5000 ICU beds across both the public and private health system, from the 3300 that we started off with.
That is thousands of beds short for the minimum of 20 000 that is needed as we near the peak of infections.
It has now been reported that during the past several weeks, South Africa has only added 207 critical beds in the public health system. This capacity was meant to have been built rapidly during the weeks that the country was under lockdown. If we are being denied information on the capacity of the system per sub-district, it means we are unable to hold government accountable and ensure that they have done the work of capacitating the health system.
The refusal to give this information suggests that there is a desire to hide how much work has been done to ensure that that each province, each district and sub-district is well-equipped for the peak of infections that have been anticipated in the coming weeks.
Whole hospitals in provinces like the Eastern Cape have been shut down due to poor infection control mechanisms and inability to keep healthcare workers safe. We cannot only find this information out in a piecemeal fashion on the front pages of newspapers.
Members of Parliament must have an intimate understanding of the readiness of each province and each area. South Africans require a legislature that will conduct its oversight role rigorously. The spurious use of the section of the Act undermines that role. More importantly, it seeks to shield government from accountability.
While the outbreak of this pandemic has been unavoidable, the health response to it is the responsibility of government and we need to ensure that this work is being done in order to save lives.