This comes after a fire damaged parts of the hospital on Tuesday. Areas affected by the fire include records management and frontline services, maternity services, mother and child, acute and chronic, dental care and allied health services, among others. Patient files were also destroyed. 

The total cost of the damage is estimated at over R16 million. According to Northern Cape Health Department’s Lebogang Majaha, the cause of the incident remains unclear but an investigation is underway.

“As a part of our interim measures as the department, we have deployed some of our medical practitioners to beef up the numbers at some of our healthcare services and centres in particular. Mostly that will be at Florianville, Masakhane Clinic, Betty Gaetsewe, Mapule Matsepane and the City Clinic that is primarily located within the Sol Plaatjie Municipality,” says Majaha.

The fire took place during the night between 23h00 and 00h00 and no-one was hurt. “At the time of the fire, there were five maternity cases who were admitted and were immediately referred to Kimberley Hospital for further management,” he said.

Sandie Kwon-Hoo reports from Kimberley that this allegedly follows after Karibuni Services security staff abandoned their post due to a dispute with the Department of Health regarding their contracts that have been prematurely terminated.

The new service provider Defensor Security that was due to start on 1 November was appointed to take over security duties as from last night.

OFM News