Health
In terms of the Sterilisation Act, 1998 (Act 44 of 1998):
(1) Whether each public health facility in the province maintains a sterilisation register as required by section 6 of the Sterilisation Act, 1998 (Act 44 of 1998); if not, (a) why not, (b) what are the details of the facilities that have not kept record and (c) what is the period (in years) for which the facilities have not kept record; if so, (d) what are the relevant details and (e) for what period (in years) have registers been kept;
(2) whether action has been taken against the person or persons who failed to comply with the statutory requirement; if not, why not; if so, (a) what are the details of the person or persons and (b) what action have been taken against each one;
(3) whether her Department has implemented measures to ensure compliance with the statutory requirement to maintain a register; if so, what are the relevant details?
(1) All facilities are compliant, and record of sterilisations performed are kept the following way:
- All surgical procedures, including sterilisations, are comprehensively logged in the mandatory theatre procedure register which includes date, time, type of procedure, type of anaesthesia, surgeon, anaesthetist as well as length of procedure.
- All patient details are recorded i.e. name, surname, date of birth, hospital number, address, method of sterilisation, complications if any.
- Registers are kept for 21 years.
- All post-partum patients that received a sterilisation directly after delivery will also have their maternity case records available for 21 years as this is part of the records management policy – so all clinical notes will be available for 21 years.
- Other procedures such as laparoscopic sterilisations, will have clinical records available for 5 years after last access to the hospital.
- All patient procedures and visits are logged on clinicom and the data is easily available for statistical purposes or referencing.
In summary – if a patient had a sterilisation (or any other surgical procedure) the hospital will be able to provide the patient demographic details, the date and time of the procedure, the clinicians involved, the length of the procedure and whether the patient was treated as an inpatient or a day patient. If the patient received the sterilisation as part of post-partum care the clinical notes (records) will be available for 21 years – likewise if the patient was a minor or lacked decision making capacity. For all other patients the clinical notes will be available for a duration of 5 years after last accessing the health facility.
(2) Not applicable as all facilities are compliant.
(3) The nursing management at the various hospitals check files and registers w.r.t compliance.
