Empty medicine shelves of Gauteng hospital

Fluoxetine, better known by the brand name Prozac, is used to treat depression.

GroundUp Staff

12 December 2014

Gauteng hospitals are suffering severe medicine stockouts. Here are photos that GroundUp has obtained of the empty shelves of a pharmacy in a Gauteng tertiary hospital. All the medicines shown (or, to be more precise, not shown) are used to treat psychiatric conditions.

Last week The Times reported stockouts at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital. On Monday, GroundUp reported that Gauteng hospitals had been out of stock of the life-saving medicine amphotericin B.

The photos here, obtained from a protected source, are understood to be a bit more than a week old.


Amitriptyline is used to treat depression.


Citalopram is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor used to treat depression.


Haloperidol is an antipsychotic used to treat schizophrenia and other psychiatric illnesses.


Quetiapine is an antipsychotic used to treat shizophrenia, bipolar disorder and severe depression.


Risperidone is an antipsychotic used to treat shizophrenia and bipolar disorder. It is also used to treat children with autism.


Trifluoperazine, besides being an antipsychotic used to treat shizophrenia, is also used to treat anxiety if other medicines have not helped.