The South African Society of Psychiatrists (SASOP) has warned that public hospitals across the country are running short of medicines used to treat mental illness.
In a statement issued on Thursday, SASOP said its members had reported shortages of essential psychiatric drugs over recent months. The group said the problem seems to affect the whole country.
According to SASOP, most of the reports came from Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, the Western Cape and the Eastern Cape.
“Oil, the product that depends on the Strait of Hormuz, has not yet run out, but psychiatric drugs have. Isn’t it strange?” Dr Mvuyiso Talatala, a past president of SASOP, told IOL.
SASOP said the shortages affect medicines for all mental disorders. It said it was most worried about treatment for severe illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder.
The group said some doctors have switched patients to other medicines. It warned that these substitutes are also at risk of running out soon.
SASOP also raised concern that psychiatrists at some public hospitals were not allowed to write private prescriptions. Such prescriptions would let families buy the medicine at private pharmacies.
Talatala told IOL he believed the ban came from fears that families might post the prescriptions online and alert the public to the shortage.
He said SASOP had not received a clear reason for the shortage from the Department of Health or other health bodies.
“The explanations range from pharmacists in facilities not ordering on time [to] the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority having closed some pharmaceutical manufacturing plants due to the blockade in the Strait of Hormuz,” Talatala said.
He said these reasons did not explain why so many medicines, made by different companies for different disorders, were running out at the same time.
Talatala said the Strait of Hormuz reason did not make sense to him. He said the drugs are made in South Africa, and some ingredients come from countries not affected by the blockade, such as India.
SASOP said the shortage has had a devastating impact on patients, health facilities and communities. Talatala said patients who go without their medicine are at risk of relapse, which harms their health and makes treatment harder.
“When patients relapse, there is increased utilisation of hospital beds that are already a scarce resource. Patients are then left waiting for beds in emergency departments of hospitals for hours to even days,” he said.
Talatala said this puts pressure on emergency departments, where nurses are not trained to care for mentally ill patients. He said this also leads to human rights violations.
He called on the Department of Health to find the cause of the shortage for the sake of patients’ lives.
IOL said it asked the office of Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi to explain the shortage and the department’s plan to fix it. The office had not replied by the time of publication.
Source: this article is based on reporting by IOL. Image: IOL. Written with the help of AI and published by the Tzaneen Voice News desk. See our Editorial Standards.
Kgomotso Maake covers news and politics for Tzaneen Voice. Kgomotso reports on government, Parliament, municipalities, courts, crime and service delivery across South Africa, with a close eye on how national decisions reach towns like Tzaneen and the wider Limpopo province. Stories are written in plain English and focus on the facts: who made the decision, what it means, and what happens next.