Criminals are taking advantage of soft targets like clinics to terrorise staff and patients and brazenly attacking and robbing them, notes MedicalBrief, with both Mpumalanga and the Eastern Cape being hammered by a string of incidents recently.
The Mpumalanga Health Department is increasingly concerned about the rash of crime at healthcare facilities in the province, after two attacks in just one week – one being the hijacking of an ambulance and the other, the outpatient department at a hospital being vandalised and the staff robbed.
In the first incident in Carolina, Community Safety, Security & Liaison MEC Vusi Shongwe said a group of people who had been injured at a tavern fight were taken to the local provincial hospital.
After one died from his injuries, his friends vandalised the department and attacked and robbed nursing staff on duty, reports News24.
The second incident occurred last Sunday morning, when a group of men held up a security guard at Phola Nsikazi Community Health Centre in Mbombela before opening fire on the driver of an ambulance. The driver was injured.
The gang then drove away in the ambulance.
“The security task team of the company contracted to the department responded immediately and recovered the ambulance within two kilometres,” Shongwe said.
The MEC is to hold discussions with contracted security service providers to find better ways of protecting the facilities.
Meanwhile, GroundUp reports that in the Eastern Cape, attacks at five clinics in Gqeberha in recent weeks have left staff and patients traumatised.
Health Department spokesperson Yonela Dekeda said the incidents included:
• five staff robbed at gunpoint at Nomangesi Jayiya clinic;
• a break-in at Kwazakhele clinic that left staff traumatised;
• a gun fight outside Rosedale clinic, resulting in the death of a gang member and staff being trapped inside;
• a gang member chased and stabbed by three members of a rival gang inside Middle Street clinic;
• three staff robbed on their way home, just outside Lunga Kobese clinic.
Dekeda said the department was providing counselling to the affected staff.
To improve security in facilities, the department has launched an Integrated Security Solution, which will include security guards, the installation of alarms with panic buttons, and cameras, among other features, she added.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Patients, staff, traumatised after hospital robbery
Increasing violent attacks put state healthcare workers at risk
Bogus doctor allegedly raped another Mpumalanga hospital patient