Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa

Media statement 

Tuesday, 11 December 2018  

As tomorrow, 12 December, marks Universal Health Coverage Day, the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (DENOSA) would like to call upon the portfolio committee on Health in Parliament, Minister of Health and Health MECs in provinces to ensure that adequate investment into the heartbeat of healthcare, nursing services, is addressed for better health outcomes patients and communities.

Investment into the country’s healthcare has been hugely lacking for many years now in South Africa, and the results of this neglect are the longer queues that patients have to endure for hours before they get help, the many conflicts between healthcare users and health workers as well as the burnout that shows in the form of negative attitude.

As DENOSA, we are making this sincere call because it has almost become a norm to expect nursing excellence to present itself automatically without any real investment into it by government or private healthcare employers.

Human Resource Development is one element that has brought the quality of healthcare to low levels in South Africa, which is tragedy. The clearest example of this tragedy is Gauteng Department of Health, which had employed a staff complement of just over 60 000 workers before the year 2000, which was looking after Gauteng’s population of 7 million people then. To date, the Gauteng Department of Health has employed just 68 000 workforce which serves a population of over 13 million! And this population figure excludes the millions of unregistered immigrants who enter South African borders daily.    

With this example of Gauteng, it is a miracle that health workers are still able to save lives in health facilities when their workload has more than doubled from the year 2000. 

With this workload, comprehensive healthcare has gone out the window in our health facilities. Instead, our nurses, who are the face of the healthcare, are forced to work to push the queues and not give the proper time in consultation room to patients because half the patients would be turned back due to shortage of nurses.  

The worsening attitude of health workers has been narrated more than enough in our media platforms and many nurses have been admonished by health minister, parliamentarians and communities at large, and yet many objections or protests over the shortages in facilities by the same health workers has not drawn the attention of the public into taking action. 

DENOSA says: if universal health coverage is to be realized in South Africa, where everyone receives quality comprehensive, affordable and accessible healthcare, investment in nursing must start today and attitude towards this investment must start with our legislatures, minister and MECs. 

DENOSA pleads with the portfolio committee on Health in Parliament to look at the reports by the Office of Health Standards Compliance (OHSC), which does inspections of the country’s health facilities, and see how low scoring many health facilities in many key areas are. 

DENOSA is reminding everyone that health is a right in South Africa, and proper investment into it must show the country’s appreciation of this right. Life Esidimeni should be a hard lesson for all of us that failure to invest in health can only bring sour consequences.    

In conclusion, because South Africans have been deprived of quality, affordable and accessible healthcare, the effects of this are also felt on the country’s economy because illnesses in citizens advance and require curative treatment which is expensive by its nature. 

End 

Issued by the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (DENOSA)

For more information, contact:

Cassim Lekhoathi, DENOSA Acting General Secretary 

Mobile: 082 328 9671 

Or 

Simon Hlungwani, DENOSA President

Mobile: 082 328 9635 

Tel: 012 343 2315 

Website: www.denosa.org.za

Facebook: DENOSA National Page 

Twitter: @DENOSAORG