No easy remedy for ills, says director

PATIENTS sleeping on floors is an unfortunate problem arising from circumstances at hospitals, the Department of Health says.

Wards are filled to capacity and the availability of beds is a pressing issue.

A health specialist has spoken out about the department’s endeavours to provide quality health care despite a plethora of challenges.

Some people have questioned why the department has not bought beds with the yearly budget allocated for this.

According to an online OLX advert, a two-crank manual hospital bed, with movable wheels, back and foot rest, and aluminium alloy side rails, costs R8 500. A second-hand hospital bed goes for R4 500.

Dr Phila Mazamisa, chief director of hospital services in Gauteng, said solving the problem was not as simple as increasing the number of beds at facilities that had dire shortages.

“The situation is not ideal. We don’t like it and nor are we doing it deliberately.

“Having said that, we can’t just push stretchers in between beds to cater for extra patients. It is wrong.

“It’s also bad for infection control. Imagine treating patients at close proximity to each other? It would not bode well for health care.”

Mazamisa said there was more to solving the problem than providing a hospital bed.

Among other things, it was necessary to ensure there was adequate space in a ward, sufficient equipment, food, medicine for the patient, and enough staff to attend to the gravely ill.

“Divide this by the number of beds available at our hospitals and you will see a bed is not that cheap.”

Mazamisa said society contributed to the overcrowding of hospitals.

“There are instances when patients are not fetched when they are discharged.

“This is the case with many foreign nationals who add to the population and cannot be chased away as they also have a right to health care.

“We also find that some patients bypass district hospitals – to the extent that these facilities are not well utilised.

“In some cases nurses have had to give patients transport money out of their own pockets, to ensure there are enough beds. It’s a lot of these anomalies that feed into the system.”

Turning to the problems in intensive care units, Mazamisa said: “We don’t fail to use ICU beds because we don’t have doctors – it’s because we don’t have specialised nurses.

“We have embarked on task-shifting, where qualified nurses can be used in ICU units.”

Mazamisa said merely building hospitals was also not a solution.