Helen Joseph Hospital video doesn’t reflect entire healthcare system, says Aaron Motsoaledi

Health minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi has defended South Africa’s overall health system after a video of a manadmitted at Helen Joseph Hospital in Johannesburg for two weeks complained about “uncaring” staff, saying he had lain for a day in his own faeces at the state facility.

The video, which has gone viral, shows broadcaster Thomas “Tom London” Holmes complaining about the treatment he was receiving from health practitioners, saying patients were treated like “cockroaches”. The video also shows the poor infrastructure at the hospital.

While acknowledging the challenges faced by the public health system, Motsoaledi said the video was not a reflection of health-care generally in the country. He argued that good work done by dedicated healthcare professionals should not be overshadowed by isolated incidents.

“It broke our hearts. It was quite disappointing. But under no [circumstances] are we going to condemn the whole public healthcare system because of what happened at Helen Joseph,” he said in an interview with the SABC.

“There are millions of South Africans who have gone through our hospitals, been treated, and sent home. For instance, every year, more than a million pregnant women go through our hospitals and deliver babies ... without any incidents. [But] we are not going to sit here and argue that we don’t have problems. We do have them.

“The public healthcare system treats 86% of the population every year, which amounts to millions of people. These cases don’t appear in the media because the media highlights only negative stories. But [every now and then], we do [have incidents such as the one at Helen Joseph Hospital], which breaks our hearts, obviously.

“However, I am saying that [on the basis] of what happened at Helen Joseph, and in many other areas where something went wrong, we should not throw our hands in the air in despair.”

Motsoaledi said the majority of South Africans relied on public healthcare facilities, and that the NHI would fix the unequal health system. Mismanagement occurred because good managers went where resources were.

“We are busy trying to fix the system and the issue of universal health coverage. We want to equalise the system so we get good managers on both sides of it,” he said. 

“That’s why we want to introduce universal health coverage, so that we cover everybody financially because, at the present moment, we are running a healthcare system with parallel healthcare systems, whereby one healthcare system has huge resources for 14% of the population, while 86% of the population don’t have those resources. Helen Joseph is within that 86%, and that’s why we want to change that system.”

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