People who were taken to the Butterworth Hospital after a car accident on Friday were not attended to by Monday, Eastern Cape Health MEC Sicelo Gqobana said.
"When I went there I found that five people who were in an accident on Friday last week were not being attended to. The bandages had not even been changed," he said after a surprise visit to the hospital.
The injured were transferred to other hospitals, under the MEC's instructions. A woman with severe back injuries was airlifted to an East London hospital.
Gqobana said there was no linen on the beds which were old, "from 1942", no food in the hospital kitchen, no instant milk for babies and no equipment at the hospital.
The babies' milk arrived after Gqobana's visit.
The hospital was also dirty, he said. The hospital clearly had management and human resource problems.
"They are badly under-staffed even though we allocated them ten nurses," he said.
Management have been told to fast-track the acquisition of food for the facility.
The MEC would meet hospital management on Tuesday to help improve the situation there. He said management had to be up to the task they were employed to do.
Gqobana said he would continue to pay unannounced visits to the province's hospitals to ensure that they ran smoothly.
