The department of health should address the "negligence" of the Eastern Cape's health officials that led to the death of 142 babies in the province, the Democratic Alliance said on Sunday.

The national health minister should be initiating processes to have the province's health department placed under administration, DA spokesperson Mike Waters said in a statement.

The Minister of Health had received a report into the death of the babies but had ordered officials to rewrite it as they had "missed the point".

Last month reports emerged that 78 children from Eastern Cape towns of Barkly East, Maclear, Sterkspruit and Elliot had died as a result of diarrhoea allegedly caused by contaminated water.

DA officials have pegged the number of dead babies at 142.

Waters said the deaths of the babies were the latest in a long series of failures on the part of the health department.

He said the Eastern Cape had the highest peri-natal mortality rate in the country while the mother to child HIV transmission programmes had shrank to 10 percent.

"The latest health barometer shows that Eastern Cape has the highest peri-natal mortality rate in the country. This department has brought about a situation where the provinces health system is in a state of collapse," he said.

Waters said last year there was another scandal in the province when figures were released showing an "unacceptably" high rate of baby deaths at Frere Hospital.

Efforts to get a comment from the department of health failed.

Sapa