The Eastern Cape’s severe ambulance shortage has worsened, with more than half of its available emergency fleet now grounded and only 39% of its ambulances operational.
Of the current fleet of 350 ambulances, 211 are grounded and sitting idle at various private service providers and government garages awaiting repairs and maintenance.
This leaves just 139 available to respond to emergency calls across the province’s rural and urban communities, serving a population of more than 7.2-million.
The situation, which often results in critically delayed response times during emergencies, is one the provincial government concedes “presents a significant operational challenge”.
National health norms and standards require one ambulance for every 10,000 people, meaning the province would ideally need about 720 functional ambulances.
The latest figures also show the situation has deteriorated since health MEC Ntandokazi Capa recently responded in writing to parliamentary questions from DA MPL Jane Cowley about the province’s ambulance shortage.
At the time, Capa said the province had 353 ambulances, of which 161 were grounded and 192 operational.
However, figures provided by health department spokesperson Siyanda Manana on Thursday show the operational fleet has since fallen by a further 53 ambulances.
The decline has been years in the making.
In September 2021, the province had 300 operational ambulances. By early 2022, that number had fallen to 244.
In her recent response, Capa said one of the worst-affected areas was the Sarah Baartman district, which covered more than 58,000km².
Thirty of its 37 ambulances were grounded, leaving just seven to serve more than 533,000 people across seven local municipalities.
They include the Makana, Ndlambe, Blue Crane Route, Kouga, Koukamma and Sundays River Valley municipalities.
The Alfred Nzo district had 27 of its 39 ambulances grounded, while Joe Gqabi had 24 of 42 emergency vehicles in for repairs, leaving 18 operational ambulances.
Buffalo City Metro had more than half its fleet out of commission, with 16 of its 30 ambulances non-operational, while the OR Tambo district was without 20 of its 54 ambulances.
The Amathole district was less severely affected, with 11 of its 62 ambulances grounded, while the Nelson Mandela Bay metro had nine of its 40 emergency vehicles out of service.
In the Chris Hani district, 25 ambulances were operational while 24 were grounded.
However, Manana’s latest provincial figures indicate the situation has deteriorated further since Capa’s response.
Previous parliamentary replies revealed that repairs and maintenance of these crucial vehicles took an average of 120 working days.
Manana said that of the 211 ambulances currently grounded, 44 had been out of service for less than 30 days, while the remainder had been grounded for periods ranging from more than 30 days to 120 days.
“These ambulances are grounded primarily due to mechanical and maintenance-related faults requiring assessment, repairs and the availability of parts,” he said.
“The high number of grounded ambulances places significant pressure on EMS operations and the available operational fleet.
“It affects the department’s ability to maintain optimal ambulance coverage and response times, particularly in areas with high emergency call volumes.
“Operational ambulances are therefore being utilised intensively to ensure that emergency calls continue to receive attention.
“The department acknowledges that the current fleet availability presents a significant operational challenge and is prioritising the restoration of grounded ambulances.
“The impact is particularly significant in areas where there is a combination of high emergency call volumes, large geographical distances and limited available ambulance resources.
“Rural areas are especially challenging because of the distances that ambulances must travel to reach patients and health facilities,” Manana said.
Cowley said it was deeply concerning that the province’s “ambulance crisis” had worsened, with her party demanding urgent intervention to address systemic delays in repairs.
“For thousands of Eastern Cape residents, an ambulance is more than an emergency vehicle.
“It is the lifeline between a sick or injured patient and the health care they desperately need.
“That lifeline is becoming increasingly fragile.
“Across vast rural areas, patients and their families are being left waiting while ambulances stand broken, emergency personnel scramble to find alternative transport, and an already overstretched health system struggles to keep functioning,” Cowley said.
She described the scale of the crisis as alarming.
“The failure does not lie with EMS personnel.
“Paramedics and frontline managers continue working under extraordinarily difficult conditions, often with vehicles that lack essential equipment or fail to meet occupational health and safety requirements.
“The problem is financial. Medico-legal claims against the department have left it factually bankrupt, and while measures have been put in place to address these claims, all programmes within the department suffer the fiscal fallout,” Cowley said.
EFF MPL Simthembile Madikizela said his party had repeatedly raised concerns about the management of the government fleet in the Eastern Cape.
“These concerns have now reached a critical point, where the failure of the fleet management system is having a direct impact on the delivery of essential public services and, most importantly, the lives of our people,” Madikizela said.
Government departments, institutions and entities are required to comply with the terms of a transversal contract administered through the National Treasury, including requirements for government vehicles to be repaired and maintained through approved service providers.
Madikizela said the contract arrangement “cannot continue and must be stopped”.
“We view the consequences of such arrangement as a grave assault on the right to life and access to essential public services, particularly in rural communities.
“When ambulances, police vehicles, social development vehicles and other essential government vehicles remain unavailable, ordinary people pay the ultimate price,” he said.
Manana said the department had recently experienced a transition in the management of the national contract for the maintenance and repair of state vehicles, with a new service provider taking over management of repairs.
“The transition initially resulted in some backlogs in the processing and management of repairs.
“The department is working with the new service provider to address these backlogs and expedite the assessment, repair and return of ambulances to operational service.
“The department is closely monitoring the repair process and expects an improvement in the turnaround times for grounded vehicles,” Manana said.
He said the department was addressing the shortage by prioritising repairs, redistributing available ambulances where possible and procuring replacement vehicles.
The department said additional ambulances were needed to address the fleet deficit, replace ageing vehicles and improve EMS coverage across the province.
Manana said 80 new replacement ambulances were “currently being prepared for release shortly”.
The Dispatch has previously reported on families across the province who lost loved ones after waiting hours for ambulances, which in some cases never arrived.
Daily Dispatch
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