Audit outcome on public healthcare facilities a true reflection of conditions on the ground - DENOSA
Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (DENOSA) views the audit outcome on the country's public healthcare facilities as a true reflection of the conditions and challenges confronting both patients and health professionals on a daily basis, and hopes its recommendations will be taken to heart.
Titled the ‘National Health Facility Audit Report', the audit was commissioned by the Department of Health in 2011, which was announced on Thursday. It showed, among others, that 93% of maternity wards do not have functional and essential equipment to keep mothers and the newly-born babies safe (see here - PDF).
We believe that this is an answer to the country's currently high child mortality rate. Instances that may compound the problem in addition to nurse shortages and overcrowding could be the allocation of nurses who are not midwives to maternity sections of hospitals as big as Chris Hani Baragwanath, which DENOSA has been strongly opposed to.
These infrastructural problems in the country's health facilities have effects on many fronts. The relationship between the community and health professionals at these public health facilities is deteriorating to the lowest level, as communities often believe that nurses are often to blame for the wrongs that occur in healthcare facilities.
As the audit has found that only 25% of staff in clinics embody positive and caring attitudes, the morale of staff at the facilities is affected by the shortage of staff, poor and unreliable supply of medication to hospitals and, in other cases, non-payment of health workers.
On the need to address both clinical and physical safety of both patients and health professionals in the public health facilities, many nurses and doctors have the scars of physical violence at the facilities where safety is no longer guaranteed.
DENOSA supports minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi's diagnosis of the problem in physical safety of our health facilities, in that the department may need to be involved directly in the procurement of security personnel, and not via the tender process as the focus tends to be on profit-making rather than prioritizing the tightening of security at our facilities.
DENOSA believes the audit outcome is one more reason and fair justification to embark on the joint campaign on Positive Practice Environments (PPE) together with SAMA, where we call for the rectification and tightening of compliance mechanisms with regard to procurement of necessary infrastructure for our health facilities to be effective and to be able to respond to the needs of patients.
Statement issued by Sibongiseni Delihlazo, Communications Manager, DENOSA, March 27 2013
Provincial compliance according to the report:
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