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Stuff from Johannesburg

16 000 Patients wait for cataract ops in Gauteng

Dear Johannesburg

The number of patients waiting for cataract surgery in Gauteng has increased dramatically to 15 957 as 8527 cataract operations were cancelled since the COVID-19 lockdown on 26 March this year.

This is revealed by Acting Gauteng Health MEC Jacob Mamabolo in a written reply to my questions in the Gauteng Legislature.

According to Mamabolo, the waiting time for cataract surgery varies from two weeks to 16 months depending on the facility.

The highest number is at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital with 3028 cataract patients waiting for surgery, followed by Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Hospital with 2350, and Sebokeng Hospital with 1900 cataract patients.

Waiting lists for cataract surgery at other hospitals are as follows:

  • George Mukhari – 1608
  • Leratong – 1100
  • Lenasia South – 1000
  • Kalafong – 980
  • Helen Joseph – 980
  • Steve Biko – 900
  • Thelle Mogoerane – 800
  • Tembisa – 576
  • Pretoria West – 238
  • Tambo Memorial – 237

Mamabolo says that catch-up surgeries are planned, including marathons using extended theatre time after hours and over weekends.

I welcome special measures to cut the backlogs for cancelled surgery.

A good start is being made with cataract surgery where the numbers are highest, but there are many other operations that had high backlogs even before the lockdown.

The fastest way to cut the backlogs would be for the Gauteng Health Department to pay private hospitals to treat public patients, which should be seriously considered.

Regards

Jack Bloom MPL
DA Gauteng Shadow MEC for Health

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The Randlord Mansions: History

The history of these mansions is also a story of urban warfare and preservation. In the 1960s and 70s, as Johannesburg expanded, many of the original Parktown estates were ruthlessly demolished to make way for the M1 Highway and the massive concrete campus of the Wits University Medical School. The “Parktown War” saw heritage activists fighting the bulldozers to save what remained of the city’s architectural soul. Today, several of the surviving mansions serve as corporate headquarters, schools, or museums, stripped of their private domesticity but preserved as monuments to a gilded age.

Interestingly, these mansions also played a secret role in the city’s political evolution. It was in the drawing rooms of Parktown that the “progressive” mining elite would meet to discuss the future of the country, often finding themselves at odds with the more conservative Boer government. Lady Florence Phillips, in particular, used her influence to found the Johannesburg Art Gallery, insisting that a world-class city needed world-class culture, not just gold bars. Today, walking the “Heritage Trail” through Parktown offers a haunting contrast; you stand in the quiet, manicured gardens of the victors, looking down at the pulsing, crowded city that their gold mines created. It is the ultimate “view from the top,” a reminder that the extreme wealth of Sandton today has its DNA rooted in the stone-and-timber palaces of the 1900s.