The Northern Cape has lost its only public paediatric oncologist after Dr Liezl du Plessis left Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe Hospital in Kimberley following eight years of treating children and teenagers with cancer.
Du Plessis, who established the hospital’s paediatric oncology unit, returned to her hometown of Pretoria in February. She now works in the private sector for the first time, bringing an end to a public-sector career built around providing specialised cancer care in one of South Africa’s most sparsely populated provinces.
A departure shaped by years of pressure
She said there was no single event that caused her to abandon her plan of running a paediatric oncology service in Kimberley. Instead, the decision followed the steady accumulation of difficult experiences, inadequate support and the emotional cost of working in a hospital where essential systems were not reliably functioning.
It accumulates over time. I think when you leave the state [sector], you actually have post-traumatic stress disorder or something.
Du Plessis said the experience of working in the public health system had left her with what she described as a form of trauma. Her account points to the pressure placed on doctors who are expected to provide complex treatment while relying on laboratory, maintenance and other hospital services that may not operate as required.
Doctors carrying samples to the laboratory
Among the problems she described was the handling of blood samples. A doctor treating a child with cancer depends on laboratory results being processed promptly, particularly when an abnormal result requires immediate attention. Du Plessis said samples were sometimes lost or delayed, and that doctors could not rely on the normal internal collection process.
She recalled that doctors had to take blood samples to the laboratory themselves. In her account, leaving a sample in the expected collection system did not guarantee that it would arrive at the laboratory or be processed in time. She said staff had to identify urgent samples personally and follow up on them to secure results.
- Laboratory services: samples could be delayed, lost or fail to receive timely attention.
- Clinical responsibility: doctors took samples to the laboratory themselves when they could not rely on internal collection.
- Hospital maintenance: the number of staff available to repair basic faults fell sharply during her time at the hospital.
Fewer hands to repair a failing hospital
Du Plessis also described a deterioration in the hospital’s maintenance capacity. She said the facility had previously had between 40 and 50 people working in its maintenance workshop. By the time she left, she estimated that only two or three people remained.
The workshop was responsible for routine problems such as broken toilets and leaking pipes. The reduction in staff meant that doctors and other health workers operated in an environment where basic infrastructure was increasingly unreliable, she said.
| Hospital service | Situation described by Du Plessis |
|---|---|
| Laboratory | Doctors sometimes transported blood samples themselves to ensure they reached the laboratory. |
| Maintenance | Staffing fell from an estimated 40 to 50 people to about two or three. |
| Paediatric oncology | Du Plessis was the Northern Cape’s first and only specialist in the field in the public sector. |
A specialised service in a province with limited capacity
The loss is significant because paediatric oncology is a highly specialised area of medicine, and Du Plessis was the first and only doctor in the Northern Cape dedicated to treating children and teenagers with cancer in the public sector. Her departure leaves the service she built without the doctor who established it.
The account also highlights how the quality of specialised treatment depends on more than the availability of a doctor. Blood testing, internal transport, maintenance and other support functions form part of the treatment pathway. When those systems fail, the burden is transferred to clinicians, patients and families.
Du Plessis said her decision was not prompted by a lack of commitment to children with cancer. Rather, she described a public-sector setting in which the absence of dependable support made it increasingly difficult to deliver the standard of care she wanted for her patients.
From a public hospital to private practice
Her move to Pretoria marks a change in both location and sector. After eight years at Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe Hospital, she is now practising privately in her hometown. It is the first time she has worked in private healthcare.
For Kimberley and the wider Northern Cape, the departure represents more than the loss of one doctor. It raises questions about how specialised public healthcare can be sustained when experienced clinicians face exhaustion and accumulated trauma, particularly in facilities where basic support services are under strain.
Du Plessis’s experience is a personal account of why a doctor who established a paediatric oncology service eventually left it. It also places the everyday workings of a provincial hospital at the centre of the discussion: a blood sample that must be carried by hand, a leaking pipe waiting for repair, and a specialist service depending on systems that no longer function consistently.
