operations
19 April 2006
Patients needing knee, hip and eye operations in Gauteng no longer need to
wait for a year for these surgical procedures to be done to relieve them of
their pain.
Provincial hospitals have over the past year substantially reduced the
waiting times for these operations and improved the quality of lives of people
who required this surgical intervention.
The waiting time for knee and hip replacement operation has been reduced
from one year to between two and three months, for heart operation the time has
come down from a year to between four and six months while patients needing to
have cataracts removed from their eyes have to wait only one month as compared
to 12 months before.
Hospitals in the province had a backlog of 4 680 operations (518 knee
replacements, 567 hip replacements, 387 heart operations and 3208 cataract
removals) at the beginning of last year and managed to do 5 676 (215 knee
replacements, 390 hip replacements, 500 heart operation and 4 571 cataract
removals) by the end of the year.
This has led to the complete eradication of the backlog of cataract
operations in the province. A total of 303 knees operations, 177 hip
replacements and 50 heart operations will need to be done this year to
eliminate the backlog.
The MEC for Health Mr Brian Hlongwa has welcomed the reduction in waiting
times for operations in the province.
âWe, however, have to also focus on eliminating waiting times in other areas
of the system such as admission sections of hospitals, medical dispensaries and
clinics. The experience that patients have when visiting our facilities has to
be changed by improving the attitude of our staff and further improvements in
the quality of care provided,â he said.
Enquiries:
Simon Zwane
Tel: (011) 355 3841
Cell: 082 551 9892
Issued by: Department of Health, Gauteng Provincial Government
19 April 2006
