Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa

Media statement 

Wednesday, 14 July 2021

The Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (DENOSA) would like to point out that the healthcare system in both Johannesburg and Durban has taken a great strain from the community unrest which has halted vaccination programme, bared access to the workplace for nurses and a greater influx of emergency cases into trauma units by looters and many of whom are later confirmed COVID-19 positive.   

For this, DENOSA now calls on both the President and all ministers responsible for law enforcement to order, because their failure to do their work is now adding more workload onto the shoulders of the already exhausted healthcare workers when they are not even providing the necessary assistance so that healthcare workers can be able to go to work safely. Many nurses are not able to go to work because roads have been blockaded in their communities.  

In Durban, not only has the supply of medication to clinics and other community healthcare centres been cut off, but the looters are starting to demolish their own clinics while many cases of injured looters are causing an influx in trauma units and causing a serious competition to COVID-19 admissions.

At Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital in Johannesburg, not only are injured looters causing a great strain to the facility’s trauma unit, but nurses are having to deal with and handle emergency cases which later turn out to be COVID-19 positive after they have been referred to other units. Since this morning alone, the trauma unit has not had less than 10 confirmed COVID-19 patients which poses a risk of infection not only among healthcare workers but risk spreading infection to other patients. 

What is becoming obvious from what healthcare workers are experiencing is that the unrest is contributing greatly to the spread of COVID-19 infection – the unrest has become a super spreader event.  

There are nurses in facilities who have been at work since Sunday because of the unrest, and those who are at home cannot come to work. Yet the same nurses are being threatened by the employer with “unpaid leave” when there is nothing they can do. 

Given that there is no public transport that is operating effectively and safely in both Gauteng and the affected areas in KZN, it follows logic that the government should provide the necessary assistance to nurses who are called essential service workers. But none of that has happened so far. 

DENOSA calls on all its members not to risk their lives by risking going to work, because the government won’t take any form of responsibility for their families if they were to be killed. The ball is in the court of the government if it cares about the quality of healthcare services rendered to communities. The country has been held to ransom because the unrests in communities have been allowed to become super-spreader events and blockade roads.      

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 

Simon Hlungwani, DENOSA President 

Mobile: 082 328 9635