South Africa\u2019s nine provinces have collectively employed 13 135 nurses during the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
Health Minister, Dr Zweli Mkhize, said he was pleased with the numbers saying this proves that it is \u201cpossible to achieve such numbers in such a short space of time\u201d.<\/p>\n
Speaking at the Society of Private Nurse Practitioners of SA conference on Sunday, the Minister said government is cautiously breathing a sigh of relief as the country continues to see a decline in detected cases, hospital admissions, deaths and excess deaths.<\/p>\n
This as South Africa recorded 20 deaths on Sunday, the country\u2019s lowest one-day death toll since 23 May 2020.<\/p>\n
In addition, 649 793 people have contracted the disease since the outbreak in March. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur recovery rate is now almost at 90% and our mortality rate has remained stable at around 2%,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said mothers affected by COVID-19 have given birth to healthy babies.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are breastfeeding and physically bonding with their children, laying foundations for the wholesome upbringing and solid building blocks for a healthy and prosperous society.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saluting nurses<\/strong><\/p>\n Mkhize said these achievements have been possible because of the passion, dedication and sheer diligence of nurses and midwives.<\/p>\n \u201cWe thank you for braving the threat of being infected yourself, and even of death.\u201d<\/p>\n To date, over 31 000 healthcare workers have contracted Coronavirus, of which many of them are nurses and midwives, while 240 health practitioners succumbed to the disease. <\/p>\n Mkhize conveyed his heartfelt condolences to the families of those nurses who lost their lives.<\/p>\n Nursing Now campaign and roadmap<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIn December last year, I had the privilege of launching the Nursing Now campaign, a three-year campaign initiated by the global nursing community with the sole objective of improving health care delivery to our people.\u201d<\/p>\n The five key areas focus for this global campaign are ensuring that nurses and midwives have a more prominent voice in health policy-making; encouraging greater investment in the nursing workforce and recruiting more nurses into leadership positions.<\/p>\n It also involves conducting research that helps determine where nurses can have the greatest impact and sharing of best nursing practices <\/p>\n \u201cIndeed, these key focus points align perfectly with the objectives of the Presidential Health Compact, The Quality Improvement Plan and, ultimately, the National Health Insurance.\u201d<\/p>\n The Minister said his department will soon publish the Strategic Direction for Nursing Education and Practice that outlines a roadmap for strengthening nursing and midwifery in South Africa for the next five years.<\/p>\n In addition, work has been done to promulgate and subsequently proclaim various sections of the Nursing Act, he added.<\/p>\n He also thanked the nurses for making his job easier as Minister of Health.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to assure you that I share your aspirations of a better world through the work that we do to secure a healthy population for quality of life and prosperity for all.\u201d \u2013 SAnews.gov.za<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" South Africa\u2019s nine provinces have collectively employed 13 135 nurses during the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Health Minister, Dr Zweli Mkhize, said he was pleased with the numbers saying this proves that it is \u201cpossible to achieve such numbers in such a short space of time\u201d. Speaking at the Society of Private Nurse Practitioners […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[38678],"class_list":{"0":"post-165695","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-sanews","8":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165695\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}