Cancer Alliance heads to court over Gauteng Health Dept's failure to use millions set aside for treatment of cancer patients

JOHANNESBURG - The Cancer Alliance is headed to court over what it describes as the Gauteng Health Department’s failure to do anything "meaningful" with the hundreds of millions of rands that were set aside to deal with the massive backlog of cancer patients waiting for life-saving treatment in the province.

In March 2023, provincial Treasury announced a R784 million allocation to the department "to urgently address [a] backlog in surgical and radiation oncology services" stemming from a shortage of personnel and equipment.

More than a year later, the Cancer Alliance says, these patients are still living in limbo.

The Cancer Alliance, which is represented by Section27 in these proceedings, says in June 2023, the department committed to a plan to use the allocated funds to address the backlog in providing the services in question and that a key part thereof involved outsourcing these services to an appointed service provider.

And in April this year, the department announced R534 million of the funds in question were being invested in equipment and R250 million, allocated for the outsourcing.

But the Alliance says it has since emerged that the latter is only for the procurement of planning services and not the actual provision of treatment, which means that desperate patients are still left in the lurch.

The organisation wants the state to be ordered to take "all necessary steps to provide radiation oncology services to backlog list patients" and interdicted from using the R250 million it says it’s allocated for outsourcing, pending a review of the decision.