‘Absolute chaos’: Doctors call for more support as Gauteng faces health emergency

Doctors at Gauteng’s main hospitals fear that they are being overwhelmed by the third wave of Covid-19 and believe that urgent and decisive measures are needed to support them and the hospitals they work in.

A doctor at Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital, sounding as if he was on the verge of breakdown, today described the situation at that hospital as “absolute chaos” and “getting worse and worse”.

He expressed grave fears about how the hospital will cope if the third wave in Gauteng does not peak for another two weeks. “We are all feeling desperate. We are not okay. Pretending that it is, is not fair on the medical staff and nurses,” he said.

He reports that the pharmacy is now seeing 1,000 more patients a day than usual and that the hospital has now had to suspend the surgical emergency unit to make more capacity available for Covid-19.

Many doctors are feeling betrayed by the provincial health department and the premier. Calls to reopen Charlotte Maxeke’s 56 ICU beds, closed since April, have fallen on deaf ears.

An online petition to reopen the hospital, initiated by Prof Daynia Ballot, Head of the

Wits School of Clinical Medicine, has got over 24,000 signatures. But the hospital remains defiantly closed.

Once again, the Alternative Building Technology hospitals have proved to be unready when another wave of Covid hits. At Chris Hani Baragwanath, only one of the four blocks of 125 beds is being used and even then the new wards can’t be used for very sick patients because the necessary ICU equipment and specialists are all in the main hospital, 500m away.

But what really grates health workers is hearing officials from the premier’s office telling the media that the province is managing.

“They are not being honest with the public,” said the doctor.

At Steve Biko academic hospital and Tshwane district hospital, another doctor reported that: “It’s bad. Overflowing. Trying to open more beds. Trying to get more nurses and doctors.”

He added that “deep demoralisation is setting in with the senior doctors”.

When asked what needs to happen, doctors are unclear. They want recognition of the crisis, a government that shows in action that it is moving significantly to help, a united approach across public and private health sectors, the reopening of Charlotte Maxeke and a wholehealth-system approach to responding.

And, according to some doctors, desperate times justify desperate measures. At George Mukhari hospital in Pretoria, chief intensivist Dr Nathi Mdladla is now prescribing Ivermectin, authorised for controlled compassionate use by the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra), to patients with respiratory distress and says: “When both patients and healers are despondent and feel overwhelmed, outcomes cannot be good for both. In the last two weeks I feel I have been given hope as my patients are given a fighting chance. Most importantly, I feel emboldened to be giving a legal product.” Today, he told me that “it is now making an impressive difference – from morale to outcomes”.

Finally, the doctors we spoke to are making a desperate appeal to the public to realise the seriousness of the situation and to do everything possible to protect themselves and others from infection. “There are no beds if you get seriously ill with Covid. The probability is many people will die because we can’t give them the care they need.”

The latest report from the Medical Research Council shows a marked increase in excess deaths by 12 June in Gauteng; the total number of excess deaths is getting close to the 30,000 mark. This is a far more accurate number reflecting the toll Covid-19 is taking on Gauteg’s health system than the official figure of 11,919 deaths reported by the Department of Health on 17 June. Many feel that the latest measures, particularly the minimal restriction on alcohol sales, are not

drastic enough.