The health department has taken steps to ease an apparent shortage of oxygen cylinders for the province's ambulances, the Weekend Witness reported.
|||Durban - The KwaZulu-Natal health department has taken steps to ease an apparent shortage of oxygen cylinders for the province's ambulances, the Weekend Witness reported on Saturday.
Lerato Mosiah, the head of Afrox Healthcare, was quoted as saying the company had been approached “to relieve supply pressures facing EMRS 1/8Emergency Medical Rescue Service 3/8 in KwaZulu-Natal which is struggling to obtain medical supplies.”
Earlier this week the Democratic Alliance's KwaZulu-Natal leader Sizwe Mchunu said the EMRS had not received deliveries of oxygen cylinders for its ambulances for the past two weeks.
The department's spokesman Sam Mkhwanazi admitted that there were “challenges”, but said the DA's claims that ambulances were having to ride without oxygen was a case of “scoring political points rather than speaking facts”.
The Health and Other Service Personnel Trade Union (Hospersa) on Friday called for KwaZulu-Natal Health MEC Sibongiseni Dhlomo to be sacked over the shortage.
Hospersa spokeswoman Michelle Connolly said on Friday that “supplies have been so low for July that, at many emergency services bases, only one vehicle has been equipped with the required oxygen.” - Sapa