The Big Read: Cadre deployment can kill

21 July 2015 - 02:04 By Justice Malala

It was one of those stories that makes your heart lurch. On Friday afternoon a man called into Talk Radio 702 and told stand-in host Stephen Grootes that his wife had been told by a hospital that the baby she was carrying had died.Then the story turned even more tragic. The man alleged that his wife had been told that she should go home and return today for her labour to be induced. That meant that she would be carrying her still-born baby inside her for the whole weekend. This is not torture: it is torture upon torture. How is a woman expected to carry a dead child inside her for three days? How inhumane, how unfeeling for a fellow human being, can we be?I don't know what is true and what is not about this story. The radio station reported later that health MEC Qedani Mahlangu said the woman would be admitted to hospital on Saturday morning. The chief executive officer of the Dr Yusuf Dadoo Hospital told the radio station on Friday night that it was the mother who refused to be admitted to the hospital.This much I know is true, though. As my heart lurched that day, Grootes fielded calls from people who spoke about exactly the same thing happening in hospitals in Pretoria, in the Eastern Cape, in Limpopo and in many other parts of the country. The notorious Frere Hospital, in the Eastern Cape - at which newspapers uncovered a massive increase in baby deaths about eight years ago - was mentioned again and again.The response from the Dr Yusuf Dadoo Hospital implies that the woman refused help. This makes one wonder why her husband would call a popular radio station to try to get some action.There is a bigger, political, question, however. Throughout the afternoon, callers to the station begged for Minister of Health Aaron Motsoaledi to intervene. Where was he, they asked? Why isn't he doing something about this horrific situation?After this newspaper published a story last week that a teenager died in the waiting room of a Durban hospital after allegedly being turned away by two government hospitals, similar calls for Motsoaledi to act were made.The reason the teenager was turned away was that one hospital reportedly did not have doctors or nurses who could handle trauma cases and the other would not admit him because he was injured outside its "area of responsibility".Two weeks before this incident, Bongani Mazibuko claimed that employees of the Bheki Mlangeni Hospital, in Jabulani, Soweto, refused to treat his 64-year-old father because he didn't have the R20 admission fee they demanded. Mazibuko claimed he had only R15 on him, and by the time he managed to get the extra R5, two hours later, his father had died.I have written on these pages about the disaster that is unfolding at Free State hospitals, at which people are dying because of lack of medicines and at which doctors are under immense pressure.The Free State health MEC has been accused of giving an ICU bed at this hospital to a politically connected individual at the expense of the poor. Many have called for the MEC to be fired but he is said to be close to the premier of the province so he has kept his job.What I am getting to is this: Motsoaledi is hailed as a hero by many South Africans. His energy and dedication on HIV/Aids, his openness to dialogue, his availability at all times, his work ethic and his commitment make me proud to be South African.Yet he is absolutely powerless to do anything about most things in the provinces. People can die en masse at Free State hospitals and Motsoaledi can do nothing about it.This is because, in terms of the constitution, the national government is responsible only for policy making on health whereas the provinces do the actual work: they run the hospitals or, in the case of many, run them into the ground.Worse, the health MECs are appointed by premiers and not the health minister. This means that Motsoaledi has to work with whatever incompetent he is handed by a provincial premier. That incompetent is usually someone who has no clue about health issues but happens to be powerful in the provincial ANC. That means that the premier is scared to fire the incompetents.This is part of what leads to so many hospitals performing so badly. This is why there are no consequences when things go wrong. The dedication and ethos that exist at Motsoaledi's level do not exist at the Free State provincial health department, for example.Unfortunately for the ordinary man and woman, the service they should be getting is dispensed by the employees of the incompetent provincial health departments.Unless this changes many other poor, sick people will find themselves in exactly the same situation that unfolded at Dr Yusuf Dadoo Hospital on Friday...

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