Africa-Press – South-Africa. The Gauteng Department of Health says it is working on decreasing the backlog of nearly 11 000 outstanding postmortem reports in the province.
The department said on Tuesday that there was a backlog of over 10 900 postmortem reports.
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Of those, 2 308 were at the forensic chemistry laboratory and the rest at the forensic pathology laboratories. The department said the turnaround time on postmortems varied due to the complex nature of the procedure and the various departments involved in each case.
While a postmortem would take between 60 to 90 minutes, compiling a report could take up to six weeks.
Gauteng Department of Health spokesperson Kwara Kekana said:
Kekana said the nature of the case and death also affected the turnaround time.
“For instance, a single stab wound report may take shorter to complete than a multiple gunshot death case report. Multiple gunshot wounds, which are prevalent in some areas of the province, contribute immensely to backlogs,” said Kekana.
Meanwhile, the department said there was motivation to review staff establishment and organograms to strengthen existing staff numbers to deal with the backlog.
“The filling of all funded posts as and when they become vacant is prioritised to ensure that facilities have adequate human resource personnel to carry out the work,” said Kekana.
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