Health Department's condom distribution fIgures under scrutiny

It’s said each of the found dumped boxes had an estimated 6 000 condoms and was clearly marked with the Department of Health’s logo(SABC)

Recent boasts by the national and provincial health departments at the recent SA Aids Conference held in Durban about how successfully condoms were being distributed may in fact be flawed.

The distribution figures may include thousands of condoms that had simply been dumped, the Democratic Alliance (DA)’s KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) health spokesperson, Dr Imran Keeka, said on Sunday.

Keeka said his concerns over the figures had arisen after a DA councillor in the northern KZN town of Utrecht had found two boxes of health department condoms dumped at the municipal dump.

“Each has an estimated 6 000 condoms and are clearly marked with the Department of Health’s logo. They also show the expiry dates 03/2017 and 02/2019.”

KZN health MEC, Sibongiseni Dhlomo, said he had been alerted by Keeka to the dumped condoms. “I have asked for the photographs and the batch numbers so that we can see who was allocated these boxes and investigate this matter,” said Dhlomo.

Keeka said he welcomed Dhlomo's investigation.