Health e News
A South African resolution expressing concern over the continued international migration and recruitment of health personnel will be tabled at the World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva.
Health services in South Africa are being compromised as the country continues to experience a shortage of critical health personnel. Two months after the Minister of Health promised to release the all-important national human resources plan to address the under-staffed public sector, there is no sign of it yet.
An inadequate budget, a chronic shortage of staff and a deep gap in management undermine the quality of health care at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital. Unions, government, and hospital management all agree that remedial action is necessary.
Where many nurses have left the public health sector for greener pastures elsewhere, there are still those who remain dedicated to their work. One such veteran has been at her post at Chris Hani Baragwanath for 34 years.
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The World Bank and International Monetary Fund, both financial organizations that aim to reduce poverty, are preventing foreign aid from reaching HIV/AIDS programs in developing countries, claims an article in this week’s issue of The Lancet.
Patients are known to gauge the efficiency of their local health centre by how long they have to wait for their medication to be dispensed. This places immense pressure on pharmacists and their assistants who often work against all odds to deliver the medicine to the hundreds waiting.
‘The shortage of staff makes everything bad. This is the cause of all the problems of working conditions of nurses,’ says Sibonelo Cele, a staff nurse at Mahatma Gandhi Hospital, north of Durban.
Thousands of posts in the public health sector are vacant and the crisis is deepening as nurses, doctors and pharmacists leave in search of better working environments. However, a human resources plan to address the crisis has still not been released despite promises.
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Apportioning blame is often the first reaction in a situation where one party in a relationship finds that they are HIV-positive. But there are other ways to handle the matter.
For the last 10 years, professional nurse AILEEN TURNER has commuted between Cape Town and London in an attempt to make a decent living doing what she does best.
Chief professional nurse Ruth Kgesa has been nursing for 34 years, and today supervises a surgical female ward at CHB Hospital, which has between 32 and 42 patients at any time.
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Despite the Health Minister’s concern that many patients on anti-retrovirals (ARVs) may be experiencing side-effects, doctors report that around 10% of their patients have had drug difficulties, with only one percent being serious.