Arrangements have been made by the health department with the electoral commission to enable government hospital patients to vote in the general election or local elections.

The patient’s doctor will indicate in the patient’s history if the patient can leave hospital to vote, and if yes, whether an ambulance or other sort of transport would be needed.

Patients can choose to avail themselves of the transport services being offered by the department, or make arrangements for transport with relatives. Where relatives will be conveying patients, written permission has to be requested beforehand from the hospital administrator. The permit would need to be shown first to the hospital security officer, to gain access to the hospital, and then to the official in the hospital handling patients’ transport.

Where patients go to vote against their doctor’s advice, or do not accept advice taken about the means of transport, a signed declaration would be requested from the patient.

Patients need to carry the voting document with them. Patients who wish to entrust their document to the hospital authorities will be able to do so, with the document’s security being guaranteed.

There will be no outpatients, physiotherapy or other clinics on voting day, nor will medicines be issued to outpatients in hospitals. Visitors will be allowed in hospital only if they are relatives who are authorised to transport patients for voting; if they are relatives of patients in danger of dying; the husbands of women who would have delivered that day, or who are in labour; parents of children recovering in hospital, in wards or in the emergency department; one person with every adult allowed into the emergency department; and persons carrying consignments or urgently needed services in the hospital.