Durban - A private hospital in Ballito will be phasing out its maternity ward in January to make way for a mental health facility, owing to the low number of deliveries recorded there over the years.
The Netcare Alberlito Hospital has confirmed that its maternity, neonatal and paediatric units on the second floor of the hospital will be replaced with mental health services for adolescents and adults – a move that has led to an outcry from the public and a women’s health body.
While the number of babies born at Alberlito was disputed by the hospital, the South African Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (SASOG) recorded 327 births in the past year, or about 27 births per month.
Sara Nayager, regional manager of Netcare’s KZN hospital division, said an 80-bed mental health service for adolescents and adults would be created in the space that the current maternity, neonatal and paediatric units occupied.
“The national Department of Health (DoH) records that more than 6.5 million people in South Africa were in need of professional mental health intervention, of which almost 1.3million require care for severe psychiatric conditions.
Replacing the maternity, neonatal and overnight paediatric services, for which there is such low demand, with mental healthcare services will provide a solution for the hospital’s overall sustainability, making it possible for the hospital to continue offering a host of other specialised medical and surgical services, and protect the jobs of our staff members,” said Nayager.
She said there was a dwindling demand for the overnight paediatric, neonatal and obstetric facilities in the past 10 years. The SASOG expressed shock at the announcement. Gynaecologists and paediatric doctors at the hospital have been given notice that their lease won’t be renewed in January and they must leave the premises by April.
The SASOG president Dr Haynes van der Merwe complained that no formal communication about the decision was granted to the affected doctors. “It’s very disappointing how the hospital has decided to go about this.
We don’t dispute that mental illness is an important issue but we feel other solutions could have been viable, like reducing bed occupancy at the maternity unit than totally wanting to shut it down.
Some of the doctors have worked for many years at the hospital, while another doctor moved from Johannesburg to KZN with their family just last year,” said Van der Merwe. He said the medical specialists were dedicated to the Ballito community. “We believe that children and pregnant women should always have access to community-based health care.
This decision will affect the children and pregnant women who live in Ballito and will have a negative impact on the livelihood of most of these clinicians and their staff,” said Van der Merwe.
However, Nayager said community well-being was considered when the decision was made. She said the hospital would still have limited paediatric overnight beds and in the unusual event that more children required overnight hospital care than the hospital could accommodate, there was provision for the patients to be transferred to the closest facility most appropriate for their specific needs.
“The lower paediatric admissions in our facilities reflect global trends towards treating children on an outpatient basis wherever possible and speaks to ethical paediatric practice as opposed to over-servicing.
Netcare has therefore been subsidising these unsustainable units for years to keep the hospital afloat and to continue providing health care at this facility.” Nayager added that after many attempts to make these units more sustainable over the years, including discussions with doctors and other stakeholders, the hospital was forced to consider the impact that this scenario has had on the overall sustainability of the hospital, which she claimed, had run at a loss over many years.
She said this was due partly to under-performing and resource-intensive units. Nayager said affected specialists had either been offered practising privileges at other Netcare facilities, where Netcare has seen a demand for such services, or alternative options had been discussed.
“We’ll also do our utmost to ensure alternative consulting rooms for those specialists affected in office spaces close to the hospital.” She said patients could access these specialised services at other health-care facilities, like the Netcare uMhlanga Hospital, which was 30km from the Netcare Alberlito Hospital. The other available hospital where babies could be delivered was the Mediclinic Victoria Hospital in Tongaat, which was 12km away from Ballito
SUNDAY TRIBUNE