HOSPITAL’S NURSING STAFF LIVE IN FEAR

“IT’S so bad here that many of my colleagues wish they could just contract Covid-19 so that they can stay home for 14 days rather than come to work.”

A nurse at Nkhensani Hospital in Giyani, Limpopo, has alleged that the environment at the hospital had become so unbearable that most of his co-workers often took unplanned leave just to be away from the “poorly managed” facility.

According to the nurse, who cannot be named for fear of reprisals, the hospital’s surgical ward, which was converted to an isolation ward to accommodate growing numbers of Covid-19 patients, filled up in December, forcing nurses to break protocols by moving Covid-19 patients to the TB and medical wards.

Sowetan spoke to two other nurses who also wanted to speak anonymously, and both alleged that out of the 22 patients in the medical ward last week, 17 were Covid-19 cases.

However, Sowetan could not independently verify this claim because of strict Covid-19 protocols that do not allow visitors in the wards.

The medical ward also caters for malaria, asthmatic, hypertension and diabetic patients who are higher risk for Covid-19.

“What is of great concern is that Covid patients and ordinary patients share the bathroom, use the same blood pressure reading machine, linen and cutlery, which can result in cross-contamination,” said another nurse who works in the medical ward.

However, Limpopo health MEC Phophi Ramathuba on Sunday denied that the hospital was mixing Covid and non-Covid patients.

She said Nkhensani had only had five confirmed Covid cases and another seven cases that were still under investigation, leaving the 15-bed isolation ward with about 40 percent occupancy.

Ramathuba said that all TB wards in the province had been converted into Covid-19 wards as they were hardly occupied. She said all the hospitals in her province were coping and that beds were available.

“The TB ward at Nkhensani had one TB patient who has his own bathroom and is separated from the Covid patients in his ward.

“The nurses that are saying we are not following the protocol are saying this out of fear. I’m not angry at them. Sometimes a patient is admitted at the medical ward for hypertension but on further investigation it is learnt that they have Covid.

“That patient will then be taken to the isolation ward to recover and sometimes the nurses that cared for them in the medical ward did not use their PPE properly and now they get scared,” said Ramathuba.

Limpopo has seen an exponential surge in Covid-19 cases since the second wave of the pandemic was declared in December. Hospital admissions have also increased drastically, with high number of patients needing critical care.

During the first wave of the pandemic it took nine months for the province to breach the 500 recorded Covid-19 deaths.

During the second wave it has taken just a over a month to breach the same number of deaths, with a total of 1,169 deaths recorded in the province since the outbreak in March last year, making it one of the hotspots for the virus.

Nkhensani has had 32 Covid deaths since December 1.

“Around December 23 we started seeing many Covid-19 patients and the isolation [ward] filled up. Many of them were sent to the TB ward and others to the medical ward. It was a compromise.

“Both ordinary patients and Covid patients could infect each other, and even worse, a nurse might acquire both infections. We don’t have management here. When things get tough, management goes on leave,” said one nurse.

The nurse also complained about a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE).

Ramathuba conceded that they had problems with the supplier and that boots were the biggest challenge. “The hospital has shield masks and N95 masks,” she said.

Sowetan was further told that a cleaner and her manager were recovering at home after being infected by Covid-19, resulting in rubbish piling up in the wards and the sluice room. Ramathuba said the hospital had only gone one day without cleaners and that managers had to look for replacements.

National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union provincial secretary Jacob Adams said they were not aware of problems at Nkhensani while the Democratic Nurses Organisation of SA in Limpopo said it would deploy leaders to visit the hospital this week.