Thursday, 28 March, 2024
HomeNews UpdateSAHR getsex-MEC’s report on Mpumalanga’s health woes

SAHR getsex-MEC’s report on Mpumalanga’s health woes

A report to the [b]South African Human Rights Commission SAHRC)[/b] on the state of health services in rural [b]Mpumalanga[/b] found medical waste dumped near children’s wards and a ‘sinking’ mortuary. And, writes the [s]Sunday Times[/s], yet another hospital in the province was built with asbestos, its roof rusty and leaking, and its walls cracking. The report by the province’s former Health MEC, Candice Mashego-Dlamini, has been submitted in response to the SAHRC’s investigation into healthcare in the province. Mashego-Dlamini said upgrades and new capital projects over the next three financial years would amount to R2.4bn, but that only R419.4m was available. The [b]Democratic Alliance’s[/b] Hamilton Thobakgale called on the Health ministry to intervene urgently.

In response to health worker arrests in the [b]Free State[/b], the [b]SAHRC[/b] hasexpressed ‘concern’ at the arrest of peaceful protestors staging a sit-in at the Free State Health head office. ‘We have been advised that most of the protestors are women health care workersexpressing dissatisfaction with the state of health care in the province and the alleged dismissal of about 3000 community health workers’, said a [b]SAHRC[/b] statement.

Patients on [b]Gauteng’s East Rand[/b] are caught between a rock and a hard place, the [b]Health MEC[/b] Qedani Mahlangu has been told. [s]City Press[/s] reports that at the and [b]J Dumane Clinic[/b] in Vosloorus, nurses prescribe expired medication and when patients complain, they are punished by being told to come to the clinic every day to receive the daily dose of their chronic medication. Further, at the [b]Phola Park Clinic[/b] in Thokoza, which is supposed to operate 24-hours a day, the gates are closed at 11.0pm and the nurses sleep the night shift away. These were some of the allegations heard when Mahlangu made an unannounced visit to the facilities. Mahlangu described the claims as ‘disturbing and inhumane’. She instructed the clinic managers to take disciplinary action against nurses implicated.

The [b]Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (Denosa)[/b] has again pointed to a critical shortage of staff in [b]Eastern Cape[/b] hospitals, reports [s]SABC News[/s]. A vacancy for a nursing service manager at [b]Nelson Mandela Academic Hospital[/b] has not been filled in eight years. DENOSA’s Kholiswa Tota says, ‘If the [b]Department of Health[/b] in the province is not doing anything, we are going straight to the Minister of Health to make it a point … they are victimising and abusing the nurses acting there.’

[link url=http://www.sabc.co.za/news/a/3347538044b76bc58cb4fd3bfe17c0b1/DENOSA-points-out-staff-shortage-in-E-Cape-20140713]Full SABC News report[/link]
[link url=http://times-e-editions.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/accountingloginse2.aspx?returnurl=%2fepaper%2fpageview.aspx%3fissue%3d11072014071300000000001001%26page%3d12%26articleid%3d5068074c-9223-4a60-9207-4a34d47a8cd7%26articlekey%3dmr4aWqT6mqOISE1C9AOu6w%253d%253d%26previewmode%3d2]Full Sunday Times report (subscription needed)[/link]
[link url=http://www.sahrc.org.za/home/index.php?ipkMenuID=&ipkArticleID=283]SA Human Rights Commission statement[/link]
[link url=http://www.citypress.co.za/news/nurses-punish-complaining-patients-feel-mecs-wrath]Full City Press report[/link]

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