More than four years ago, in April 2013, the now-defunct South African Press Association wrote at length about the KwaZulu-Natal department of health's failure to pay a maintenance contract for two radiotherapy machines, robbing hundreds of cancer patients at Durban's Addington Hospital of the critical treatment they needed.
At the time professor Amo Jordaan, who headed up the hospital's oncology department since 1980, had quit over the failure to keep the machines operational, saying it affected up to 100 patients a day.
At the time when the machines were still in good working order, it slashed the waiting list for cancer treatment from eight months to two weeks.
That was four years ago.
Other media houses picked up on the story; opposition parties issued their usual statements condemning the situation; and newsrooms put faces to the story by interviewing cancer patients affected by the delay. It made no difference.
Fast-forward to the past month, when the SA Human Rights Commission in its report found that the same health department had violated the rights of oncology patients when it failed to provide services atmajor hospitals - Addington and Inkosi Albert Luthuli Central - in the province.
The commission recommended that the province "take immediate steps to repair and monitor all the health technology machines regardless of contractual disputes".
KwaZulu-Natal health MEC Sibongiseni Dhlomo's nonchalance about the situation in an interview with Carte Blanche on Sunday tells a story on its own.
Enough talk now. It is time to hold the MEC personally accountable. Take him to court for the suffering and deaths that happened under his watch. Maybe that will force him to care.
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