Pretoria - The Gauteng Health Department has vehemently disputed a media report about uncollected rape kits, which have run out of storage at provincial hospitals.
Media reports on Monday claimed the Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital has so many uncollected kits that they have run out of storage, and that rape victims are referred to private hospitals because of backlogs in public hospitals.
"This is untrue. Rape cases are treated as acute cases and are attended to immediately. There is no backlog and no person is referred to the private sector because medico-legal centres in public hospitals have the capacity to attend to cases immediately.
"Centres in Gauteng attended to 10 000 sexual assault cases last year. The cases were either brought by the police or were self referrals by survivors themselves and police do routinely collect kits in cases reported by them," said department spokesperson Simon Zwane.
In instances of self referral, Zwane said evidence is collected and survivors are given treatment before being advised to go report the alleged rape to the police.
"Where survivors follow the advice and open cases, police do come and collect specimens. However, there are instances where specimens from self referred survivors are not collected and in these instances, it is assumed that survivors have not followed the advice and opted not to report the alleged incidents to the police," Zwane explained.
Zwane noted that records indicate that only 29 specimens have not been collected up to the end of May this year.
"Medico-legal centres are cognisant of the fact that failure to collect even one specimen is a serious matter. It is for this reason that they co-operate with the police in the multidisciplinary forum that discusses rape cases. Discussions at these forums have led to the appointment of people who regularly collect specimens from the centres."
Meanwhile, the department disputed claims that the catherisation laboratory machines at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital were not working for the past two weeks and doctors at the hospital's heart unit have battled to open patients' blocked arteries.
"The hospital's cath lab has two machines and on Wednesday last week, one machine was faulty. Technicians were called in to repair the machine and it was operational the next day and patients were assisted using the second machine ... there is no backlog at the cath lab as alleged," Zwane said.
