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Gauteng’s public health system is buckling under the patient load, with over 20-million patient contacts recorded for the 2025/26 financial year and facilities operating beyond their official capacity.
Health MEC Faith Mazibuko told the Progressive Business Forum colloquium on Investing in Health and Wellness that provincial hospitals recorded close to 5.8-million outpatient visits and 670,807 inpatient admissions in 2025/26 across Gauteng.
“Our bed capacity also is not assisting us. For example, Bara (Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital) is registered to only accommodate 1,500 people, but currently you have beds that are almost standing at 2,000,” she said.
“I’m sure one person or the other among yourselves must have heard a complaint from a relative ... ‘I’ve been stuck here at casualty, I can’t find a bed’. It’s because our hospitals are overloaded.“
She said the four academic hospitals —Baragwanath, Charlotte Maxeke, Dr George Mukhari and Steve Biko —are the worst affected as they serve patients “throughout Africa, not only us here”.
Mazibuko said the pressure is worse at clinics as primary facilities saw 8,026,972 patients while outreach programmes reached another 8,491,700. But there are not enough hands to serve them.
We are short of almost more than 4,000 nurses. That is why the current staff of nurses that we have, they will tell you they are overworked, they are tired, they take early retirement, not that they want to retire. It’s because they are exhausted
— Faith Mazibuko, Gauteng MEC for health
“We also need more nurses and more doctors. We have a lot of unemployed doctors. But because the challenge is personnel and the fiscus that is there, it makes us not to be able to employ more doctors.“
She said the shortage was visible in snaking queues. “Many of our clinics, they no longer meet the demand. They are either small, others don’t even have a waiting area. When it rains, our people are exposed to rain. When it is cold, our people are exposed to coldness.
”If you go to any clinic at any given time, the queues are long. They are snaking out of that facility.“
Mazibuko said the department procured mobile clinics under its Siyabaphilisa programme because some community members spend more than R45 just to reach a clinic, causing mothers to default on child immunisation.
“Together, these figures represent approximately 33-million healthcare service contacts in one financial year ... This figure shows the demand for public health-care services and the resources that are also required.” she said.
She appealed to business leaders at the colloquium to partner with government to build hospitals in Diepsloot and Olievenhoutbosch and to modernise ageing clinics, saying the province “does not have enough resources” and needs partners with “deep pockets”.
”The human cost of the crisis was highlighted by Prof Monique Marks, a life coach and speaker at the colloquium, who said patients “are getting lost in the system“.
“What we also have, which is hugely frustrating to clients or patients, depending on how we refer to them, I refer to them as clients because they are receiving a service from me, is that when people go particularly into hospitals, but not only into hospitals, there is no continuity of care. There is very poor follow up.” she said.
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