EDITORIAL | Health system must solve staff shortage, or it will collapse

​“Mr President, please hear our cries. Lord please have mercy on us!” read the Facebook post on a memorial page paying tribute to health workers taken by Covid-19. A scroll through the photo gallery paints a silent picture of loss — loss of loved ones, loss of expertise. Then came the devastating news of a Netcare 911 helicopter crash, wiping out five experts in their fields, en route to help a gravely ill Covid-19 patient.

Our health system is holding on for dear life. Last week, the Sunday Times interviewed the family of Rowena Hawkey, who died in Durban’s Wentworth hospital under nightmarish conditions, with 11 doctors in isolation and 17 nurses off because of the virus. This week, SA Medical Association (Sama) chairperson Dr Angelique Coetzee called on the health department to lift the moratorium on filling thousands of vacancies. The strain on our systems is unmeasurable and with our state coffers running on empty, the government says it is prioritising money for vaccines — rightly so.

There are other solutions too. They might not involve filling vacancies, but they require lateral thinking.

Specialist KwaZulu-Natal doctor Rinesh Chetty has suggested SA look to other countries for lessons on how to stretch its resources: “Other countries have started training and mobilising all allied health-care workers and non-physician staff to assist within medical wards and intensive care units.” This includes involving dentists in doing swab testing, paramedics and caregivers aiding nurses, speech therapists suctioning patients and dietitians assisting with ICU patient feeds.

The SA Police Service (SAPS), whose members are also hard-hit by Covid-19 infections and deaths, last year started a re-enlistment process and in December transformed 2,000 reservists into constables. They were deployed to police stations across the country to assist members on the ground. Just like health-care workers, police officers work on the front-lines, often exposed to citizens not abiding by preventive measures. The SAPS efforts to boost the workforce are probably not fault-free, but still make a difference.

For SA to survive the second wave without a collapse of its health-care systems, our health department should not be shy to ask for all the help it can get.