Covid- 19: Horrendous Scenes in Port Elizabeth’s Hospitals

 by Muhammed Sahil

Covid-19 has affected everyone around the world but aside from the actual virus being a problem on physical/mental health, it has also exposed different countries to further disasters within their current healthcare services. This has been mainly an issue for those in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. 

Following a recent investigation by the BBC, we have been able to gain an insight in just how brutal these hospitals really are. Where is the South African government? Nurses are cleaning and surgeons are doing the laundry, which has raised many questions. The lack of resources has significantly questioned the lack of responsibility and communication of the officials responsible in sustaining the healthcare system in SA. There’s is no reason that Covid should be used as an excuse for this. Those in SA have not hid away from these issues. One medic who was involved with the delivery of two dead infants said, ‘to have several mummies and babies dying in one week in one hospital is totally unheard of and unacceptable.’ 

With hundreds of infected people turned away at the step of hospitals, the cases will only continue to rise. There have been 669 thousand cases and over 16,000 deaths in the region but no doctors want to reject these patients they’re simply have to due to lack of resources. Dr Fonda who works in Port elizabeth had expressed how heartbreaking it is to reject people, leading to many deaths.

‘Innocent lives being lost’

What’s really disturbing is that pregnant women have also died due to understaffing. Even those medics treating them must have found it really difficult. This just goes to show the great depth of the problems going on and that even without Covid these hospitals have many flaws.

Why is their government to blame?

The well known car manufacturer, Volkswagen have generously built a clinic in port Elizabeth which to many doctors at Livingston hospital has made them even more aware of how the government have failed to be efficient and useful. The speed at which Volkswagen built this clinic greatly raised questions as to why can’t the SA officials do this as well. Furthermore, it’s been confirmed that many private businesses,charities and donors have been cautions with helping the provincial health department as it has been usually been depicted as incompetent. 

Eastern Cape Health department

The South African government and media has shows that this department has bills of $180m unpaid in 2019/20. In addition $600,000 was spent on ambulance motorbikes. When your spending this much how can you afford to pay for staff,beds and other equipment required. In that area there have been 50,000 Covid cases along with nearly 70 deaths. You’d expect that in this situation things like hygiene would be tightened up e.g. sanitisers on entrance and just clean condition in general but following the investigation, worrying images of the Livingston hospital had been released.

In a Place like a hospital you’d expect this sort of stuff to be taken care of but it clearly hasn’t. One doctor said, ‘people just pretend everything’s fine.’ In addition, it's been reported that patients have to fight over oxygen supplies and that there have been rats which drink blood spilled on the floor. Even the shortage of ambulances may not really matter as we don’t know if these patients taken in will be treated anyway with such short staff/lack of equipment. The list of problems just continues with patients even sleeping ‘under newspapers.’ This doesn’t sound like a hospital. Does it? This just goes to show how normal this is for them and how this is out of their control. The government needs to take action and these medics know it. 

What is also so significant is the fact that The COVID-19 outbreak isn’t even the causation of all these issues. For example the Livingstone hospital have had no management team or officers for over a year ever since the sacking of the last management team. The lack of management has also led to disputes between the different department and the only way this can be solved is with proper leadership but they don’t have that. Along with this problem is the fact that many unions have backed the closure of small clinics, which in turn leads to an overburden of patients in the city’s major hospitals.

The split of three; Risk, fearfulness and anger

Livingstone hospital;

A small amount turn up to work, willing to risk their lives in order to help others. 

The second group have either refused to work because they’re afraid or because they’re annoyed with how the government has failed them.

The last group of the medical staff as quoted are ‘a huge element,passive or overtly aggressive.”

 

Hopefully this situation can improve otherwise the situation will get even worse for South Africa.