Six psychiatric patients are tied to their beds in two tiny, dimly lit cubicles in the emergency ward of South Africa's biggest hospital, where the country's dire healthcare crisis is starkly evident
Voting this year will mark 25 years since the end of apartheid rule, but hopes have been dashed that the new era would produce a modern, accessible public health service.The grim cost of the failing system was highlighted in a recent scandal when 144 mental health patients died in 2015 and 2016 in a botched government plan to relocate them from a private hospital to poorly-prepared local facilities as a cost-cutting measure.
Health spending in South Africa accounts for 8.8 percent of GDP. However less than half of that is spent within the public sector and 4.6 percent of GDP is spent within the private sector. Speaking outside Baragwanath, DA provincial shadow health minister Jack Bloom said the flagship hospital was at breaking point.
The vast and crumbling Baragwanath hospital has approximately 3,200 beds for some 1.5 million surrounding residents while also serving as a teaching hospital and a referral hospital from across South Africa and even across Africa.
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