South African electrician Phiwankosi Mkhize was diagnosed with lung cancer in May last year and told by the hospital to come back for a scan in 15 months.
However, after just 12 months he died, before having the chance to receive treatment.
The 66-year-old’s fate is far from unique in KwaZulu-Natal Province, the country’s second-most populous.
Hundreds of patients have died in the region over the past three years as cancer services come under acute pressure following a decision by the provincial government to cut costs and stop recruiting or replacing doctors, rights activists and doctors say.
“Patients who have cancer survive after going for chemotherapy, but for my dad it was too late,” Mkhize’s daughter, Londiwe, said days after his death on May 7.
South Africa’s human rights commission says patients at publicly funded hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal wait between five months and a year to see an oncologist and another eight months for radiotherapy or chemotherapy.
Mkhize is “a classic case of a patient who was failed by the system,” opposition Democratic Alliance provincial lawmaker and doctor Imran Keeka said.
Indeed, on social media the plight of cancer sufferers in KwaZulu-Natal is referred to as #KZNOncologyCrisis, but the problems are not isolated to the province.
South African Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi acknowledged this month that the national healthcare system in general was “very distressed,” as it battles a rise in cancer cases like in other countries, and a shortage of doctors.
“We are painfully aware of poor, or lack of management skills in most of our hospitals,” he said.
He announced funding of 100 million rand (US$7.6 million) shared between hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal and Johannesburg to buy and repair machines and hire staff to help clear a treatment backlog.
“We have helped them to hire private oncologists ... and the contract is for them to see 450 patients per month, and once the two machines start working, we will contract others to help them,” Motsoaledi said.
At least 499 patients in KwaZulu-Natal province “died while waiting for radiotherapy and curative therapy” over a 12-month period between 2015 and 2016, according to Keeka, citingh figures presented to parliament by the provincial health department.
The number excludes those who died at home or in palliative care facilities, the lawmaker said.
“The patients we send to hospitals don’t get attended to, the cancer advances and they die,” said Mvuyisi Mzukwa, who heads the South African Medical Association (SAMA) in the province.
Keeka estimates that KwaZulu-Natal Province should have at least 16 oncologists.
SAMA and opposition lawmakers say that, by last year, all but two oncologists in the province had resigned, largely due to frustration at not being able to save more lives, a lack of equipment and an overload of patients.
Overall, South Africa has 38 radiation oncologists working in public hospitals, compared with 147 in the private sector, South African Society of Clinical and Radiation Oncology chairman Raymond Abratt said.
Abratt said there was now no full-time oncologist at any public hospital in Durban, the provincial capital, and that the crunch in cancer care had been “a major problem for a couple of years.”
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