The Eastern Cape Health Department said no provision has been made for a psychiatrist post at the Port Elizabeth Provincial Hospital’s new acute psychiatric unit, which took two years to be opened.

Technical adviser to MEC Sindiswa Gomba, Dr Luvuyo Bayeni, admitted that no full-time psychiatrist had been appointed, but said psychiatric nurses taking care of patients in the emergency room would be transferred there.

Dr Luvuyo Bayeni, technical adviser to Eastern Cape MEC for Health Sindiswa Gomba. (Photo: Estelle Ellis)

“I am hoping this will happen in the next two weeks,” he said. Bayeni said the department would move patients to the unit before the end of 2019.

He said a newly qualified psychiatrist had been appointed as a second doctor at the Dora Nginza Hospital psychiatric unit. One of those doctors would visit the new facility. The ward has been earmarked for acutely ill patients who need to be hospitalised for 72 hours’ observation. The new unit has 18 beds for men and 18 for women and four seclusion rooms.

Acutely ill psychiatric patients are treated in a temporary ward at Nelson Mandela Bay’s Livingstone Hospital, where the wait for admission to a psychiatric facility can last for up to three weeks. These patients receive a visit from a psychiatrist once a week. Bayeni said this arrangement would continue, but this psychiatrist would also visit the new ward at Port Elizabeth Provincial Hospital.

There is a staggering shortage of 1,600 mental health beds in the Eastern Cape. Only three psychiatrists work in Nelson Mandela Bay’s public hospitals, including the newly appointed doctor.

Because Livingstone Hospital has the largest casualty unit in the area, acutely ill psychiatric patients came to be treated in a temporary ward in the casualty unit.

In the first six months of 2017, three patients died violently at Livingstone Hospital. One set himself alight, another hanged himself and a third jumped out of a window on the fifth floor.

The hospital did not have a dedicated psychiatrist at the time — and this remains the case. Nurses went on strike in 2017 after a nurse and a guard were allegedly attacked by psychiatric patients.

In March 2017, during two appearances in Parliament, Dr Litha Matiwane, speaking on behalf of the Eastern Cape department of health, assured MPs and oversight bodies that “a 40-bed unit [is] being opened at PE Provincial Hospital”. He said the new unit was scheduled to open in September 2017.

Next, the Eastern Cape department of health promised it had “ring-fenced” R10-million for the project and it would open its doors by November 2017.

In the interim, a temporary ward was set up at Livingstone Hospital.

The opening of the acute facility was subsequently delayed to December 2017, with the department saying the delay was due to “adding 60 more beds” — but this has not happened.

Six months later, it said it was battling to find a contractor to do renovations. The ward required extensive security measures, including CCTV cameras, guards, burglar bars and security gates with access control.

In 2018, the department said the new ward would open “soon”, but by the end of that year the former Minister of Health, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, placed the mental health programme for the province under administration.

This followed a report by health ombudsman Professor Malegapuru Makgoba which raised a number of serious concerns over the management of mental health facilities and patients in the province.

“The new unit, which will have its own dedicated staff, will go a long way in addressing the great need for mental health assistance in Nelson Mandela Bay Metro. The opening of the renovated unit also shows how dedicated the department is in addressing the issues that were red-flagged by the health ombudsman in his report on Tower Psychiatric Hospital,” health spokesman Sizwe Kupelo said.

Eastern Cape MEC for Health Sindiswa Gomba said Komani Psychiatric Hospital in Queenstown was also being renovated. MC