Administrators at public hospitals need to be taken to task for being the biggest obstacle to people accessing healthcare, but instead, it’s the healthcare professionals who are targeted, writes Sukasha Singh in Daily Maverick, who implores the Minister of Health to sit up and take notice.
When someone you love is going through diagnostic cancer tests to determine whether or not they have cancer, your natural reaction is to offer well-meaning but ultimately pointless platitudes and assurances that everything is going to be fine, even though you have absolutely no clue if that’s true.
When my sister Sandy received that call to say the biopsy of her breast tissue contained cancer cells, I had run out of words and just cried on her shoulder.
She was referred to Professor Carol-Ann Benn at the Breast Care Centre of Excellence at Milpark Hospital, Johannesburg, and everyone we spoke to before that first appointment told us how amazing she was.
I was sceptical. Over the years, I’d observed various specialists, surgeons and professors at Milpark and not all were “amazing”. So when we arrived at the busy Breast Care Centre, I wasn’t sure what to expect. There are five consulting rooms that are always full and we waited in the general reception area before being moved to one of these rooms.
Benn, a tall, lithe, friendly woman in surgical scrubs and takkies, breezed into and out of the reception area and the consulting rooms rapidly, having quick, meaningful conversations with patients and support staff known as navigators. Pam, her receptionist, moved us into one of the rooms as Benn trotted quickly out of the main door. We’d been waiting for a while, so I asked the receptionist where Benn was going. “Surgery,” said Pam.
I was concerned about waiting a couple of hours for her to finish her surgery, and Pam sensed my impatience. “She’s a very quick surgeon, she’ll be back before you know it,” she said.
Pam was right: 25 minutes later Benn walked back in and reassured us that everything was going to be okay. She did this not in some childishly optimistic sing-song manner, but with facts, science and input she had already received from the other oncologists with whom we would be dealing.
We had a dozen questions, which she answered easily and authoritatively. She told us we could record what she was saying, so I did, and I went over that video a few times to have a better understanding of the type of breast cancer Sandy had.
The consulting rooms are decorated with beautiful pictures of family holidays and pets, and we started talking about our dogs. Benn noticed that Sandy was wearing a dog-themed T-shirt. Sandy mentioned that we had designed the T-shirt as part of a side hustle.
And so, between answering our questions, giving us a ton of information about what would happen over the course of the rest of the year and phoning vascular surgeons to see who was available to do Sandy’s port surgery for her chemotherapy, Benn also tried to figure out how she could help us sell our T-shirts at the Breast Care Centre. (It didn’t work out, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.)
This is just how Benn is. She sees a problem and wants to solve it, and you get the feeling that, more often than not, she solves whatever problem she sets her mind to.
During the many consultations over the following months, I observed her remembering all sorts of personal details about the dozens of patients with whom she interacted. She also readily hands out her cellphone number to anyone who needs it.
On one occasion, Sandy and I were sitting in reception, watching Benn talk to two navigators. “Can you believe they sent that child home from Bara (Baragwanath Hospital) with third-degree burns and no analgesics? I don’t know anything about little people so I asked doctor … for a favour and he’ll be seeing the kid today, so we need to send him a thank-you and also need to send something to … because she arranged for a driver to take analgesics to the child last night.”
While she was examining Sandy, I looked at the family pictures on the walls and wondered if her children knew just how remarkable their mom was. I wondered if they forgave her easily for missing a birthday or a school play. And I wondered if they realised that if she weren’t there to tuck them in at night, it was because she – like so many healthcare professionals – was quite literally saving someone’s life.
Naturally, when I read about Benn being forced to leave Helen Joseph Hospital, I was angry. Angry because healthcare is a human right and administrators at public hospitals seem to forget that all too readily. But what made me livid was how casually Gauteng Health Department spokesperson Kgomotso Mophulane and Helen Joseph Hospital CEO Dr Relebohile Ncha dismissed Benn’s leaving.
A world-renowned specialist surgeon, with a reputation for bending over backwards to help everyone she comes across and who always tries to help those who cannot afford private healthcare, was forced to leave a public hospital for doing what doctors are meant to do: take care of their patients. Yet no one at Helen Joseph is being investigated for this.
Health Minister Dr Joe Phaahla, are you listening? Do you care about saving lives, about doing what’s needed to help people access quality healthcare?
If you are, please talk to Professor Benn and investigate the relevant administrators at Helen Joseph. Then ask yourself, what if someone you loved needed life-saving surgery and couldn’t afford it? And what if there were a surgeon who was only too happy to help, but her hands were tied because hospital administrators said your loved one lived outside the “catchment area” for that specific hospital?
How would that make you feel, Minister Phaahla? Please intervene and do something to show us that you actually do want to provide healthcare to everyone in this country, and that you value the professionals who live by the Hippocratic Oath.
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SA breast care centre gets international accreditation
Netcare recruiting patients for a collaborative five-year breast cancer trial