Crisis communication for management of government disaster : the case of Life Esidimeni in Gauteng Province, South Africa

Abstract

In 2015, the Gauteng Department of Health announced the termination of its contract with Life Esidimeni, a private healthcare provider which had been outsourced by the department to provide specialised psychiatric care to state patients. Within months of this announcement, more than 1500 patients had been transferred to the care of over 100 facilities including non-profit organisations (NPOs) and state-owned psychiatric hospitals. These facilities had inadequate resources including infrastructure and care workers, ultimately resulting in the deaths of 144 psychiatric patients. The purpose of this study was to investigate how government officials managed the Life Esidimeni crisis from the perspective of crisis communication. Using qualitative textual and thematic analysis, this study adopted Coombs’ Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) and Seegers’ Best Practice Model as frameworks to examine how the government communicated during the Life Esidimeni crisis. The study adopted a qualitative research approach and document analysis method for data collection. The study revealed that during the Life Esidimeni crisis, communication and stakeholders’ active participation were inadequate. Furthermore, the use of combined crisis communication strategies by government health officials demonstrated a misunderstanding of the nature of the crisis. The study recommends that organisations should refine their crisis communication plans based on the recommendations by the Situational Crisis Communication Theory and Best Practice Model to promote stakeholder engagement and develop unique crisis communication strategies for crises in different clusters