Note to editors: Please find attached English soundbite by Dr Jack Bloom MPL.
This morning, I did an oversight visit to the Johannesburg Provincial Laundry which services 17 health facilities, including the Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg, Helen Joseph and Yusuf Dadoo hospitals, as well as clinics.
I saw huge piles of unwashed laundry, a backlog that has built up because one of the two tunnel washers has been broken for a week.
See photos here and here, and a video here.
This laundry has 180 approved posts, of which 136 are currently funded. But the Gauteng Health Department has frozen posts, so there are only 87 employees – a 50% shortage of what is really needed.
They work overtime on Saturdays, but this is not enough to reduce the perennial backlogs. This is why Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Hospital is now using private laundries to help clean their laundry.
Another problem is that they have to manual feed the ironing machines as the automatic function does not work.
Ideally, they should be running another shift in the evening with extra staff and have preventive maintenance contracts for their machines.
It makes no sense to have expensive laundry machines that are underutilised and poorly maintained.
Meanwhile, patients suffer because of inadequate clean sheets and blankets, and the department denies there is a laundry shortage.
A DA-run department would review the five provincial laundries to ensure maximum efficiency and cost-effectiveness, supplementing with private laundries where necessary.