Is the health system in tatters?

MBOMBELA – Tempers continue to flare across Mbombela Local Municipality about poor health-care services at local clinics and
public hospitals.

Various people have called Mpumalanga News with numerous complaints ranging from “evil” treatment by nurses and
dilapidated or filthy facilities, to the lack of medication.

Last Monday three people phoned to request our intervention regarding nurses who just sit and chit-chat while there are many patients waiting for assistance.

All complaints were regarding services at KaNyamazane Clinic.

“I went there on Saturday morning and found many other
patients waiting for help. After waiting for 20 minutes with no sign of any help, I went into one of the consultation rooms where I
found one of the nurses sitting and talking to a friend.

After I had alerted her about the queue she called the next patient in,” said one of the callers, adding that it’s sad that many patients fear the health workers and they just sit there not knowing what to do.

Another caller was irked by a nurse who told her relative who was in labour at Themba Hospital that she should get herself together and stop screaming because she was too old to have babies anyway.

“I was embarrassed to hear such a statement and you can only imagine how my cousin felt about such an utterance,” said
Ms Lonny Zwane.

In February last year this publication was called to KaNyamazane Clinic after a young woman gave birth under a tree after she had
allegedly been turned away from the local clinic.

After the incident the Department of Health confirmed that it had instituted a “full-scale investigation” into the case and opened a case with the local police after the patient in question’s file had disappeared.

“We are investigating this incident and have laid charges with the police after we had lost our property, which is the patient’s file.

This is how serious we are taking this situation as a department. We will leave no stone unturned.

Drastic and unpopular decisions are going to be taken here,” the
then spokesperson for the department, Mr Ronnie Masilela said.

Six months down the line, a similar case occurred at Rob Ferreira when another woman had to give birth at the local taxi rank.

This was after she had allegedly been turned away from the hospital by nurses.

Not much had been heard about the drastic measures the department promised to take against the involved health workers, and patients continued to whine about nurses who treated them in a ruthless manner.

This reporter paid an investigative visit to a few local clinics and hospitals and the outcome was not pleasant.

At KaNyamazane, the main crisis was the long waiting time. An elderly woman who had been waiting for more than six hours without being attended to state that she was bothered by the system that was used after patients registered with the clerks.

“I always wake up very early in the morning for my visits, but you’ll find that people who came after me are called in while I’m waiting, anticipating to be the next person,” said Ms Maria Khumalo, who was at the clinic to collect her monthly medication.

Khumalo also highlighted that the nurses were rude to people, including helpless senior citizens.

The reporter asked the nurse if they had no means of creating a separate queue for the elderly to ensure that they were assisted in time and she said, “I am tired of bearing the burden of the blame for issues I feel I cannot resolve as a health worker”.

At Ziweni and Manzini clinics bad attitude and rudeness from the health workers were prevalent.

One of them who did not want to be named at Manzini, confirmed that they had a number of quarrels between nurses and patients who could not accept being treated like outcasts just because they could not afford private health facilities.

Another one from Ziweni said the current renovations were a risk to their lives and health since they had to sit at the construction site during their clinic visits.

“I’m not saying that it is okay for us to treat people in an unpleasant
manner, but sometimes we are faced with situations beyond our control.

Staff shortages lead to long waiting times for patients and poor service and it becomes too much for other nurses because they are only human and get tired,” she said.

At Themba and Tintswalo hospitals cleanliness was still a serious concern and at Rob Ferreira patients were bothered by waiting
for a long time before opening files.

Jerusalem Clinic patients were happy with the treatment the nurses
gave them, but the dilapidated structure was their worry.

Hopefully the extension that is under-way will eventually solve their concerns.

“Our nurses are always eager to help, but we just sit here holding our breaths because as you can see, this roof can collapse any time,” said one of the patients adding.

There is hope after all, although community members say that the last time they saw any movement on site was three months ago when trucks delivered sand and dug a hole which was now a threat to patients.

“Just two weeks ago, a patient fell into that hole,” said a community
member.

The sister in charge who was not at the clinic during our visit, later phoned us and said they were pleased that there was light at the
end of the tunnel since the national health department was attending to improve the structure.

Earlier this year during a health Indaba, the Speaker said after
visiting a number of primary health- care facilities in the province what she had discovered out there was not a pleasant situation.

“Throughout my visits I have learnt that we have a number of
challenges which dictates that we need to do more to improve our primary health care.

I have discovered that we still do not treat our patients in the manner that we are supposed to. I am still receiving complaints about staff attitudes and this is a big concern.

“The media is attacking us from left to right on these issues because
many people come to our facilities and they are not provided with the best health-care service.

I hope that this Indaba will address some of these challenges because we cannot be claiming to provide the best health-care service, while our core clients who are the patients are not getting better service delivery on health,” she said.

A response by MEC Mr Gillion Mashego was not available at the time of going to print. He, however, promised to respond as soon as he returned from parliamentary business in Cape Town.

We asked our readers on Facebook to share their experiences from their local clinics and this is what some of them had to say

Elias Keabetswe Dhlamini: I think you need to come and check
the service at our local clinic. The service is very poor, short staffed,
medicine crisis and bad attitude from the nurses.

John Cooper: One day I’m going to slap a nurse at Bellavista Clinic
because they think they are doing me a favour whenever they are
treating my child while my tax is paying their salaries.

Nkosi Lovedale: Nowadays nurses are like our taxi drivers.
They lack ubuntu and are only after money with no passion for the job. God forbid!

Joe Singwane: We have learnt to accept the worst they dish out daily
as normal.