SOUTH AFRICA: CRISIS AFFECTING HOSPITALS:
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English/Nat
The first real challenge facing new President Thabo Mbeki is the crisis affecting some of the country’s main hospitals.
Lack of funding and critical staff shortages are threatening to close the casualty sections of four hospitals in Gauteng province.
APTN has spent a night with a team from the Johannesburg Fire and Ambulance Service and a day with doctors and nurses from one of the hardest-hit hospitals, the Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital in Soweto.
South Africa has one of the highest violent crime rates in the world.
To make matters worse, the number of traffic accidents just keeps on rising – statistics show that last year alone, nine-thousand and 68 people died on the country’s roads.
All in all, it’s not surprising that paramedics are kept busy.
Members of the Johannesburg Fire and Ambulance Service work around the clock in shifts of either 12 or 24 hours.
Once at the scene of an accident or a crime, their priority is trying to find out if their patient has medical insurance, so that he can be taken to a private clinic straight away.
If not, they will have to find a state hospital that will take him.
But South Africa’s top state hospitals are facing a crisis of disastrous proportions – lack of funding means they soon may have to close their casualty departments entirely.
Already paramedics say that staff shortages and a lack of beds at three big Johannesburg hospitals are forcing them to waste valuable time to find a casualty section that is prepared to treat their patients.
SOUNDBITE: (English)
“There’ve been numerous occasions when we’ve had patients that are quite seriously injured and certain hospitals have refused to take the patients on the grounds that they don’t have beds or they don’t have staff or in their resuss bays, their resuss bays are full and they don’t have the facility to look after the patient. And what it means is we end up running around from hospital to hospital trying to find a place for our patient and basically, it is just demoralising for us and we don’t know what to do any more.”
SUPER CAPTION: Kenneth O’Connor, Paramedic
Doctors at Soweto’s Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital have gone public with their plight, believing their last-ditch attempt to draw attention to the crisis was the only solution.
With two and a half thousand beds, the hospital is certainly the largest hospital in Africa.
But it faces a serious crisis – budget cuts have resulted in posts being frozen.
A large number of these are said to be vacated by the end of June, leaving the hospital with a serious shortage of key staff.
If nothing is done to stem this crisis, the hospital fears the casualty department will have to close a couple of nights a week and when staff are ill or on leave.
Cuts will also have to been made in the Intensive Care Unit, while the waiting time for certain orthopaedic operations would rise from the current 18 months to several years.
The list goes on.
The doctors are dedicated to their profession and are aware that cuts have to be made in order to redress the huge imbalances in medical care, dating back to the apartheid era.
But they say that the professionals on the ground need to be more thoroughly consulted by the authorities.
SOUNDBITE: (English)
“Baragwanath has traditionally been a haven for the disadvantaged. I mean we’ve always served the disadvantaged population from the beginning of when the hospital was established. So, it is I think the last place that should be told what should be done for the disadvantaged.”
SUPER CAPTION: Dr Iqbal Karambee, speaking in his personal capacity
You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/18425a99781e5d2c907956c2a88bd69e
Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork
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