Gert Sibande District Facts
»»GERT SIBANDE is a National Health Insurance (NHI) pilot district and is one of three districts in Mpumalanga that covers a geographical area of 31 841 square kilometres.
»»THE PROVINCE has the highest HIV rate among pregnant women (46% in 2013) in South Africa.
»»THE NUMBER of adults on ART at end of 2012/2013 stood at 54 079 and 3 7 62 children in that same period.
»»TB INCIDENCE stands at 621.3 cases per 100 000 people. The TB (new pulmonary smear-positive) defaulter rate is 5.0% – it is the lowest provincially and lower than the national rate of 6.1%, and the TB treatment success rate (of all TB) was 72.2%, also the lowest in the province.
»»MATERNAL MORTALITY in Gert Sibande has more than doubled from 76.4 deaths per 100 000 live births in 2011/12 to 187.6 deaths in 2012/13.
»»THE UNDER-FIVE mortality rates from 6.45 in 2009 to 6.9 per 1000 live births in 2010. The leading causes of death for the under-five age group is Acute Respiratory Infections (ARI), diarrhoea, septicemia, severe malnutrition and tuberculosis.
»»IN ORDER to increase access to ARVs, the number of facilities providing Anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment were increased from 34 in 2009 to 161 in 2010
»»THE DISTRICT has seven Male Medical Circumcision (MMC) sites. A total of 9 232 male medical circumcisions have been performed as an intervention to reduce new HIV infections during the 2011/12 year. (The cumulative target set for 2012/13 since inception of the programme, is to have 50 000 male clients medically circumcised).
»»THE DISTRICT (made up of seven sub-districts) has a total of 1 regional hospital, 8 district hospitals, 2 specialised TB hospitals, 17 community health centres, 58 clinics, 16 satellite clinics and 28 mobile clinics.
»»THE HEALTH Facilities Audit of Gert Sibande published by the Department of Health in 2011 reported that the district had performed “very badly” on most indicators, including all subdomains relating to patient safety, the rights of patients, and facilities.
»»THE HEALTH Facilities Audit also noted “the average vacancy rate in hospitals is [only] 61% across all categories”.
»»ALMOST HALF of the posts for doctors remain vacant (a shortage of 557 people), while almost 60% of specialist posts (90 personnel) and 21.2% of professional nursing posts (1,331 personnel) remain unfilled. The Mpumalanga province has the second lowest staffing level of doctors to patients (2.31 doctors per 10,000 [patients]).
»»DESPITE THESE staff shortages, the Gert Sibande district has slashed expenditure on its eight district hospitals by almost half since 2004/5.
»»TOTAL POPULATION at 2011 census for the district is 1 043 194.
»»OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT rate of 29.70% at 2011 census.
»»THE GINI-COEFFICIENT, the rating used to determine economic parity, shown to deteriorated from 0.606 in 1996 to 0.650 in 2010.
»»DEPENDENCY RATIO at 2011 census stands at 56.50 people per 100 people.
»»KEY JOB drivers in the district are identified as public investment projects; agriculture; agro-processing; and mining.
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