Cleanliness 'key' at strike hospitals

[LazyLion]

http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Cleanliness-key-at-strike-hospitals-20100823

Cleanliness 'key' at strike hospitals

Cape Town – Health department spokesperson Fidel Hadebe has told News24 that while the strike continues, ensuring cleanliness in all state hospitals is crucial.

"What is the point of having nurses and doctors and dirty wards?" Hadebe said.

Hadebe said that although volunteers had been helping fill the gap left in most state hospitals by striking workers, more help was still needed.

"The minister has been vocal in his support for the call for volunteers," he said.

Retired nurses and doctors were being asked to help, but those not medically trained could also lend a hand with cleaning and cooking.

Road to hospital barricaded

Meanwhile in the Eastern Cape, striking workers have barricaded a road leading to the Fort Grey TB hospital, blocking the entrance for a private company appointed by the Eastern Cape health department to do the cleaning and cooking while most of the hospital's workers strike.

"The road is blockaded. There are branches and rocks on the road making it difficult to access the hospital," the department's spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo told News24 on Monday morning.

The hospital cares for patients infected with multi-drug-resistant (MDR) and extensively-drug-resistant TB.

He said the department was working with the police to get the road re-opened.

"What we want to do is ensure the safety of all the people who are working," he said.

Video of patients mopping floor

Kupelo said senior staff members had been helping with the cooking and cleaning over the weekend.

He said he could not comment on a video of two patients mopping up a hospital floor allegedly taken in an Eastern Cape state hospital, as he had not seen it yet.

In July this year, Gauteng MEC for health Qedani Mahlangu gave insufficient staff as one of the reasons that led to a highly virulent outbreak of gastroenteritis in the premature baby unit of the Charlotte Maxeke Hospital in Johannesburg. Six babies died.

I just spoke to a lady who volunteered at the Boksburg hospital last Friday. She said the place was filthy and had obviously not been cleaned in months... let alone one week of the strike. She was so mad ... she wants to know what these strikers are being paid for in the first place... because they are obviously not doing their jobs anyway.

She said she pulled away mattresses from walls and off beds and found syringes, gauzes, etc all covered in black blood and dust that had been there for months if not years.

I wish someone would do a story on what these Volunteers report back from their experiences in the hospitals.

 

[Palimino]

I just spoke to a lady who volunteered at the Boksburg hospital last Friday. She said the place was filthy and had obviously not been cleaned in months... let alone one week of the strike. She was so mad ... she wants to know what these strikers are being paid for in the first place... because they are obviously not doing their jobs anyway.

She said she pulled away mattresses from walls and off beds and found syringes, gauzes, etc all covered in black blood and dust that had been there for months if not years.

I wish someone would do a story on what these Volunteers report back from their experiences in the hospitals.

TIA

 

[The_Assimilator]

I've been to Groote Schuur twice a year for the past decade, waiting 4 hours to see a dermatologist who looks at my skin for 15 minutes then tells me to go and wait another 2 hours for medicine.

Every time I go there the place looks just as dirty as it did before. Sometimes I see sweepers pushing brooms around, but I've NEVER seen the floors being washed. The bathrooms are almost unusable - no lights, no locks on the stall doors, toilet seats missing, and of course no toilet paper, so if you're a guy needing to do a number 2, or a woman, you're out of luck. And of course, the bathrooms are absolutely filthy, I don't think they've EVER been cleaned! Ugh!

 

[PeterCH]

I've been to Groote Schuur twice a year for the past decade, waiting 4 hours to see a dermatologist who looks at my skin for 15 minutes then tells me to go and wait another 2 hours for medicine.

Every time I go there the place looks just as dirty as it did before. Sometimes I see sweepers pushing brooms around, but I've NEVER seen the floors being washed. The bathrooms are almost unusable - no lights, no locks on the stall doors, toilet seats missing, and of course no toilet paper, so if you're a guy needing to do a number 2, or a woman, you're out of luck. And of course, the bathrooms are absolutely filthy, I don't think they've EVER been cleaned! Ugh!

Buuut we're underspending. We had money for the WC. Everything is OK. Obviously what you saw was an optical illusion or a very rare occurrence atypical of the general state of the public facilities in SA.

 

[LazyLion]

She said that when she went to the Maternity section... there were 4 nurses there drinking tea on their "tea break" while several mothers were in various stages of delivery with no doctor present. They were basically delivering their own babies.

Then she was posted to the arrivals section for a while... where an argument was going on between a nurse an ambulance driver. The nurse was telling the driver to take the patient in the ambulance to "section 4" (the place where they send the patients to die) because she had no beds available. The ambulance driver was refusing to do that until a doctor looked at the man... and the ambulance driver said he was not a taxi service.

absolutely shocking.

 

[The_Assimilator]

She said that when she went to the Maternity section... there were 4 nurses there drinking tea on their "tea break" while several mothers were in various stages of delivery with no doctor present. They were basically delivering their own babies.

Then she was posted to the arrivals section for a while... where an argument was going on between a nurse an ambulance driver. The nurse was telling the driver to take the patient in the ambulance to "section 4" (the place where they send the patients to die) because she had no beds available. The ambulance driver was refusing to do that until a doctor looked at the man... and the ambulance driver said he was not a taxi service.

absolutely shocking.

Ah yes, the infamous tea breaks that are taken twice a day and cannot be postponed or interrupted for any reason, not even emergencies! Not to mention the hour-long lunch breaks that have the same constraints. And the staff all go home on the dot of 4pm. Overtime? What's that?

Perhaps if our civil servants actually gave a f**k about doing their jobs properly, they'd get the pay increases they want. Right now, they're getting the pay releases they deserve for the amount of work they do.

 

[LazyLion]

and the ironic thing is... even if the government gave in and gave them the extra margin they are demanding... they have already lost that amount in wages due to the strike!

And the same thing will happen next year... and the next.... ad infinitum. Nothing like never enjoying the extra wages they are striking for.

Forward thinking FTW!

 

[The_Assimilator]

and the ironic thing is... even if the government gave in and gave them the extra margin they are demanding... they have already lost that amount in wages due to the strike!

And the same thing will happen next year... and the next.... ad infinitum. Nothing like never enjoying the extra wages they are striking for.

Forward thinking FTW!

I think you're making an unwarranted assumption here: that the strikers are capable of logical thought. After all, if they had any brains or talent, they would be employed by the private sector, not in minimum-wage dead-end government jobs.

 

[LazyLion]

True, true.