Coronavirus testing equipment. AFP/ULISES RUIZ
The hospital, located in Chatsworth, outside Durban, is the third private facility known to have Covid-19 cases. The Netcare Kingsway Hospital in Amanzimtoti has six confirmed cases affecting medical staff. The Netcare Saint Augustine’s hospital has a total of 66 cases, including staff and patients. The latter has also registered five deaths.
Dr Charl van Loggerenberg, General Manager for Emergency Medicine at Life Healthcare said: “The Department of Health is currently doing Covid-19 audits at state and private hospitals. We are fully supportive of these and have already had visits by government officials to some of our hospitals.”
Growing number
“Over the past months, Life Healthcare has been working hard to prepare for an anticipated surge in Covid-19 patients. Currently, we are seeing a growing number of Covid-19 patients admitted throughout our healthcare facilities nationally; however, none of our hospitals are at or over capacity at this point in time.”
Van Loggerenberg said they were ensuring they mitigated the risk to hospital staff.
“…we are implementing stringent infection prevention and control safety measures aligned to National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) guidelines.”
He said this included personal protection equipment (PPE) and universal masking policies, as well as daily screening of any persons entering their hospitals.
Screened
“Employees and doctors are screened when they first enter the hospital building for the day and when they leave at the end of the day. All employees and doctors are required to report potential exposure or symptoms to hospital management as a matter of urgency, so that the necessary steps and precautions can be implemented.”
Van Loggerenberg said their healthcare workers exposure policy was in place “to ensure the effective management and resourcing of our facilities for if, or when, healthcare workers become exposed to the virus”.
“This also ensures that our facilities can continue to operate as best as possible without little or minimal disruption.”
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