The Pretoria Academic Hospital needs extra resources to cope with its patients who require specialised surgery, the Democratic Alliance said on Monday.

The party has established that 600 patients have to wait up to 12 months at the urology department for an operation.

Other backlogs at the hospital include 311 patients at the orthopaedics department who will wait between six and 24 months for a knee or hip replacement.

The backlog in general surgery is not as bad — with 327 patients who will wait about four months on average to have their operation.

This information was disclosed in a written reply by Gauteng Health MEC Brian Hlongwa to questions on the issue from the DA's Jack Bloom.

Hlongwa wrote that the backlogs were due to increased patient loads and the high number of trauma cases.

His spokesperson Zanele Mngadi said that none of the illnesses of patients on the waiting lists were life threatening.

"People with life threatening issues are being attended to; we are not saying that it is comfortable or OK for people to wait for long, we are just saying there are some reasons," she said.

The reasons included the shortage of skilled health care professionals.

Mngadi said people who were on waiting lists and in pain were not left unattended and that the department helped them as best as it could.

Sapa