Livingstone Hospital, Motherwell Community Health Care Centre, Port Elizabeth Provincial Hospital, Uitenhage Provincial Hospital, Cecilia Makiwane Hospital, Zwide Clinic, Empilweni TB Hospital, Frere Hospital, Mpilisweni Hospital, Dora Nginza Hospital, Frontier Hospital, Glen Grey Hospital, St Barnabas Hospital and Nelson Mandela Academic Hospital.
These 14 health care facilities have been in the news over the last 10 weeks, and not for the right reasons.
Staff at the facilities have either protested, initiated go-slows or stayed away, the chief complaint being about a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) — the new buzzword since the first Covid-19 infection case was registered in SA.
Who can blame them? Earlier this week the Eastern Cape government announced that 191 health workers in the public and private sector were infected with Covid-19.
These included 71 cases from Nelson Mandela Bay and 63 from the Buffalo City Municipality.
Those figures are enough to make any health worker fear going to work, especially as close to 100 people have since died from the virus in the province.
But as the media continues to highlight concerns over a shortage of PPE, it began to emerge that many facilities did have the necessary PPE, but they were being kept in storerooms instead of being dished out among staff.
There appears to be a fear the facilities may run out of protective gear.
Keeping the necessary PPE from health workers, especially if it is abundantly available, is simply unacceptable.
But, it is also a typically Eastern Cape problem of fearing more equipment may not be readily available when desperately needed because of the endless red tape when in comes to procuring goods and services in the province.
The provincial health department’s hard-line approach towards its fearful staff — and seemingly lackadaisical response when Covid-19 infection cases do surface — leaves much to be desired.
But what has come to the fore is the need to train and educate health staff on the appropriate use of protective gear.
In the absence of proper training, and creating a safe working environment for health workers, fear will reign supreme. And that may have devastating ripple effects on the citizenry, especially as we edge closer to the expected peak in Covid-19 infections in two months’ time.
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