Patients’ anti-depressant, anti-anxiety drugs cut – but department denies shortage
State patients needing anti-anxiety drugs or anti-depressants are being turned away from Provincial Hospital’s outpatient clinic and told by the nurses to buy their own drugs or that they do not need pills to stop an anxiety attack.
“I have lost so much weight that I now fit in a size 30 dress,” Cilla Uys, 67, said.
She developed an anxiety disorder after her husband was murdered. “I need my pills.”
Petro Wessels said: “They told me to drink less coffee and exercise more.”
Shelly Strimling, 50, was given a prescription for her anti-depressants on Thursday and told to go and buy the pills herself at the pharmacy. They cost R485.
“There are many others like me,” she said. “I am collecting letters of complaint to take to the Department of Health.”
Strimling has been a state patient for eight months.
When she went to collect her pills at the
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