Health Committee Chairpersons honour nurses on International Nurses Day

Parliament, Wednesday, 12 May 2021 – The Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Health, Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo, and the Chairperson of the Select Committee on Health and Social Services, Ms Maurencia Gillion, have joined the world in commemorating the 56th anniversary of International Nurses Day, writes Yoliswa Landu.

Dr Dhlomo and Ms Gillion said: “This year is different as we remember and want to pay respect to nurses who have gone ahead of us, their families and their loved ones and the contributions that they have made in an exceptionally difficult year, 2020, when the country and the entire world was faced with the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Dr Dhlomo and Ms Gillion said nurses have been at the forefront in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic and have been a reliable resource for the good health of society and the country as a whole. “We cannot have health system without them, they are the backbone of the health system,” they added.

Dr Dhlomo said: “We pay tribute to the nurses who walk around like wounded tigers, wounded physically and wounded psychologically, and those scars that we don’t see for the heavy load of work that they carried in 2020, we salute them. We wish the nurses strength and we wish them that God can carry them through and give them energy to carry on under these difficult conditions.”

The Chairpersons said they wanted “to make sure that all our nurses and other healthcare workers are vaccinated and we begin to heal the psychological scars they have and they carry on in this fight against Covid-19”.

They wished all nurses a “happy International Nurses Day even under these difficult conditions, may the nurses continue like Florence Nightingale who was known as ‘the lady with the lamp’ who looked after wounded soldiers during a time of war.”