SA Health Department runs out of the Pill

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Health Department denies severity of problem

SOUTH Africans should brace themselves for a population explosion as public clinics, particularly in Gauteng, have run out of the supply of contraceptives for sexually active women.

A senior government official, who refused to be identified, told Sowetan yesterday that the company that supplies public clinics had ran out of contraceptives.

The government supplies the public with Nordette and Triphasil contraceptive pills. “All we know is that the company is waiting for supplies from overseas and the little that they have inside the country has to go through a quality assurance test,” the official said.

Sowetan has learnt that there are 86 clinics in Ekurhuleni, and, according to the Democratic Alliance, all have no contraceptives.

It would take two months before they are delivered.

Dr Reddy, the company that supplies the contraceptives, said it was working around the clock to “close gaps ” which it hoped would be filled by the end of the month.

A manager at Dr Reddy, Nihar Patnaik, assured Sowetan that despite “slight” problems they had in July, the company would fill the “gaps ” before the end of the month.

Cape Town-based medical doctor Dr Lebogang Phahladira said problems that women who switch from contraceptive pills to the injection could face included unwanted pregnancy, bleeding, weight gain and the possibility of weak bone structure in the long term.

“Certainly, there are potential problems, especially unwanted pregnancy, ” Phahladira said.

National Department of Health spokesman Popo Maja said the department was not aware of a shortage of contraceptives in public clinics.

Gauteng, with the highest female population in the country, is hardest hit by the shortage.

Provincial health spokesman Simon Zwane denied that the shortage was severe in the province.

“There is a shortage of pills, but it is not on a large scale. Injections are available in clinics,” he said.

Of the three regions in Gauteng, Ekurhuleni clinics have no contraceptives on their shelves.

A member of the mayoral committee for health in the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Council, Khosi Maluleke, yesterday admitted there was a shortage, but insisted that in some clinics contraceptives were still available.

“It is not all clinics that do not have contraceptives, and when there is shortage of any medicine from a clinic, they have a right to go and get what they do not have from another clinic,” she said.

Maluleke denied that all forms of contraceptives were not available in clinics. “We only have a shortage of pills, and we advise people who visit clinics to consider an injection.”

DA caucus leader in Ekurhuleni Shelley Loe yesterday told a council meeting that none of the clinics in the region has contraceptive pills and injections.

During the council sitting, Loe challenged mayor Mondli Gungubele to give her “straight answers on issues and not resort to your usual racist slurs and jokes to detract from the real problems facing very real women ”.

In his reply, Gungubele steered clear of the contraceptives topic.

Loe later told Sowetan that the shortage was as a result of nonpayment of service providers by the government.