Media statement
Thursday, 06 October 2022
GQEBERHA – Given the high rise in Gender-based violence (GBV) cases in the different districts of the province, which has led to many victims seeking help in healthcare facilities, the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (DENOSA) in the Eastern Cape is calling on the Department of Health in the province to ensure that healthcare facilities have forensic nurses so that victims’ agony is not prolonged by being sent from pillar to post.
This call is especially relevant in communities where cases of GBV have been reported the most, and communities in the rural areas must be given the equal attention.
This move will assist the country towards its move to introduce National Health Insurance (NHI), with its major characteristic to re-engineer primary healthcare.
The absence of forensic nurses in community healthcare centres will lead to more community anger over what it views as negligent care of their relatives by the healthcare system because of how the referral system is designed.
The recent incident in Motherwell, Gqeberha, of a 15-year-old who was abducted and raped and referred to SAPS where she developed seizures and later passed on, has become a serious bone of contention around the comprehensive care that healthcare facilities give to victims of GBV.
As DENOSA, we strongly believe that the deployment of forensic nurses to our CHCs where victims first present themselves, will ensure that the victims’ or patient’s management is done expeditious and within the same premises where they are admitted to, unlike the current system where upon assessment and management by the nurses the victim of GBV is then referred to SAPS’ Thuthuzela Care Centres where forensic nurses are deployed.
The forensic nursing specialization is so important in an uncaring and dangerous society that is engulfed in GBV and at constant war against women and children. The one way of ensuring mass production of these specialist nurses at a post-graduate level is for the South African Nursing Council (SANC), the nursing regulatory authority in SA, to recognize it as a specialty so that nurses who undergo this specialisatin are paid for it as is the case with other specialties.
Forensic nursing is the ultimate hope in an abusive society like South Africa, because forensic nurses are trained to care for a patient in a way that also collects evidence and stores it in a credible kit so that such evidence can be presented and accepted in a court of law.
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Issued by DENOSA in Eastern Cape.
For more information, contact:
Veli Sinqana, DENOSA Eastern Cape Provincial Secretary.
Mobile: 072 432 8226.
Sivuyile Mange, DENOSA Eastern Cape Provincial Chairperson.
Mobile: 072 575 5136.
