Note to Editors: You can download a sound clip in English from Jane Cowley, MPL.
Since yesterday, 12 May 2025, the Surgery Department at Livingstone Hospital has been forced to shut down all its outpatient clinics. A notice issued by the department confirms that no doctors remain to staff these critical services. Only enough personnel remain to attend to emergency surgeries. This is not just a crisis, it is a collapse.
This devastating blow to healthcare access follows the Eastern Cape Department of Health’s continued refusal to fill vacant doctor posts or provide adequate resources to frontline facilities. As confirmed by the department itself, the province has stopped appointing new doctors altogether, even as patient numbers and backlogs soar.
Download letter.
This collapse comes mere weeks after the ANC-led provincial government rejected a DA motion proposing immediate, practical steps to reduce the province’s elective orthopaedic surgery backlogs.
At Livingstone Hospital alone, more than 1,300 people were on the waiting list, with only 48 able to be treated annually. Elective surgeries are set to fall even further, perhaps to zero.
Instead of addressing the backlog, the department has slashed commuted overtime, defied national directives from the Director-General of Health, and ignored repeated appeals from medical professionals.
The result? Outpatient clinics are closed, and surgical backlogs are worsening.
Doctors are overburdened, burnt out, and unsupported, and patients are left in pain, without hope or dignity.
The Democratic Alliance calls again on the National Director-General of Health to immediately intervene and ensure doctor posts are filled as a matter of urgency.
The Eastern Cape MEC for Health, Ntandokazi Capa, and her Head of Department, Dr Rolene Wagner, must be held accountable for their reckless and defiant decisions. They must appear before SCOPA and answer for this collapse.
Those responsible must be held to account. The people of the Eastern Cape deserve leadership that puts patients before politics.