More than 1 800 deaths of infants were recorded at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital between 2020 and February 2023, according to Health Minister Joe Phaahla.
The hospital recorded 564 infant deaths in 2020, 660 in 2021 and 600 in 2022.
Phaahla revealed the figure in his written reply to EFF MP Naledi Chirwa’s questions in parliament.
He also set the record straight about the provision of ambulances, saying it is the responsibility of Gauteng emergency medical services (EMS) and not that of the hospital.
The minister said the EMS did not have dedicated obstetric ambulances.
“Gauteng EMS is piloting the Gauteng Scheduled Emergency Transport [G-SET] which is a scheduled transport system between high-call volume facilities like Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital,” Phaahla said.
“We are encouraged by the improved response times and plan to expand G-SET during the new financial year subject to recruitment of additional staff.”
He said the action plan includes having monitoring and evaluation teams that will monitor perinatal mortality data using the perinatal problem identification programme to exclude avoidable deaths.
“Facility management must ensure that all delivering institution discuss every death within seven days, report on PPIP, and develop and follow up on implementation of quality improvement plans.”
According to a six-year study by experts from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, about 38 000 cases of infections were diagnosed with the average age of babies at the time of diagnosis of infection at seven days.
This was the first national population-level analysis of invasive newborn infections in the local public health sector and involved babies younger than 28 days admitted between January 2014 and December 2019.
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