Eastern Cape mothers slept on hospital floors and shared beds, Parliament hears

Women who had just given birth in Eastern Cape hospitals were left to sleep on cold, hard floors and benches because there were not enough beds, Parliament heard on Wednesday.

The Commission for Gender Equality told the portfolio committee on health that its investigation into six hospitals in the province also found patients sharing beds, blood on the floors and mould-covered showers used by women after surgery.

Tsietsi Shuping, the commission's head of legal services, said the findings came from hearings with the hospitals and the provincial health department, and from unannounced visits by commissioners in October 2023.

"Patients from distant rural areas end up sharing the beds," Shuping said.

"There were stains of blood that were observed on the floor.

"These are the conditions that patients have to use these bathrooms with, therefore affecting their dignity."

Shuping said those conditions were found at St Elizabeth Hospital in Mthatha, where women who had undergone surgery were washed in showers with green and black mould on the ceilings.

At Frere Hospital in KuGompo City, formerly East London, the commission found exposed electrical wires in the underground tunnel leading to the maternity ward, and a room used for terminations of pregnancy that Shuping said stripped women of their dignity.

"You will note the state of the bed, the conditions of the room, the equipment, lack of cupboards to put some of the equipment, which shows you how undignified it is, and which can even discourage people from performing terminations of pregnancy in such facilities," he said.

"Behind the hospital, there is a lack of fencing; there is a collection of waste materials that needs to be cleaned.

The commission also found that women at Bhisho Hospital had to bring their own linen to the postnatal ward.

MP Nompumelelo Mhlongo said the termination of pregnancy room had no privacy, was dirty and had utensils lying on the windowsill.

"Even if it's myself, I cannot allow myself to be exposed in such a room," Mhlongo said.

"People need to be held accountable here."

MP Paulnita Marais told the committee that during her own oversight visits in the Sarah Baartman district, new mothers who were HIV positive were sent around to the back of clinics to collect their antiretroviral medication.

"People knew when you go to the back that you are HIV positive," Marais said.

"How can we still treat people like that in 2026 by stigmatising them?

"Mothers lost babies because of this."

DA MP Dr Karl le Roux, a former rural doctor in the Eastern Cape, said patients reported verbal and physical abuse while in labour in hospitals across the country, and asked whether commissioners had spoken to women about their care.

The commission's investigation into Thuthuzela care centres, where rape survivors are meant to receive medical, police and legal help in one place, found that only one of the seven centres visited had a security guard on site.

A deputy director-general in the Eastern Cape health department told the committee that maternal deaths in the province had dropped from 127 in 2024 to 85 in 2025.

He said the department had used an R897m allocation from the health minister to buy linen and hospital beds, and had dealt with the linen shortage at Bhisho Hospital and the bed shortage at St Elizabeth Hospital.

"We are not where we would like to be, due to funding and budget constraints," he said.

"But with the resources that we have available, we continue to look at efficiency and prioritising maternal and neonatal health services."

Committee chairperson Faith Muthambi gave the department until October 15 to hand in a full report on what it had done since the commission's findings.