One nurse gives Panado to 244 patients

(//2: South Afr...I mean emaSwati, if you are having porridge crust with your sugarless tea as breakfast in the morning, are you having the time of your life, compared to someone who has nothing to eat at all?

If you have pants and no shirt, you are better than someone who walks around naked? Who walks around naked, anyway?

Should you be content living in a wobbly stick-and-mud rondavel because some people live in the streets, with the sky as their ceiling and stars as chandeliers.

A car that keeps stalling on you and breaking down every week or so, is better than walking everywhere you go, no matter the weather?

Earning is better than being jobless, isn’t it? Of course you will disagree. Sometimes it is better to stay home and save on transport costs than to go to work, only to earn enough money to pay bus fare for three weeks. So, as nurses, we understand that government wants us to always think of half a loaf being better than nothing. Where human life is concerned, we refuse to accept this. We want the whole loaf of brown bread. The problem arises when we are e[pected to even accept that two slices of bread are better than nothing.

Two slices may work for an individual for an hour or two, but you cannot possibly survive on them as a family of five.

That is why we believe government was complaining, as opposed to boasting, when it said, Eswatini had a higher nurse-to-patient ratio than other countries in SADC. SADC, of course, being the Southern

African Development Community (SADC).

The only dialogue emaSwati have seen so far is that which was held by the same SADC representatives with various stakeholders, end of story. The Ministry of Health seemed to boast to a journalist that Eswatini had more nurses than other countries in the region.

Drawing from its high school te[tbook mathematics, the ministry said instead of the country having three nurses rendering services to 1 000 people, it had one nurse for every 244 people.

However, if you go back to primary school mathematics of long division, this does not mean much. Ministry officials have played around with the figures, but as health workers, maths is also one of our specialties. Mere multiplication will tell you that this means Eswatini has three nurses for every 732 patients, which is not far off the 1 000 mark they want us to celebrate.

If you go down further with your long division, you find that other countries might just have 333 patients being taken care of by one nurse, while on this side of the continent, one nurse looks after 244.

We are still doing more calculations but for now, we are convinced that the ministry was complaining.

It was bemoaning the fact that both nurses and patients are getting a raw deal from the whole arrangement.

The nurse will make it to his or her workplace (clinic or hospital) and find the 244 patients waiting in line.

He or she will diagnose and make prescriptions for them but they will not be treated.

Why? As always, there will be no medication in the dispensary for those patients. They will only get Panado painkillers.