Doctors deserve more respect

In Cloud Cuckoo Land, the territory which the ANC occupies and wants the people of SA to share in an illogical, ruinous redistribution, there will be equity for all in the health system. After all, health is a basic human right and people have the right to fair treatment. That is one of the tenets of the vaunted National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme, which aims to “democratise” health once and for all.

In reality, there are long queues in government hospitals and clinics. There are shortages of medicines. There are staff shortages. There is a lack of competence. People die from things they should not die from when they are swallowed up by the government health system.

This dire health situation is more than a lack of funds … billions have been poured into the sector.

It is a lack of competence, or commitment in implementing the aims of an egalitarian health system.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the ongoing cavalier and uncaring treatment of newly qualified doctors – the people who will be the lifeblood of the medical care system.

At least 2 600 of these qualified – and willing – professionals are being treated with disdain by the department of health. With less than a month to go, most of them, awaiting assignments for their community service commitments, still have no idea where they will be stationed.

The excuses proffered by the health authorities are laughable, to say the least. It is simply not acceptable that these vital people are treated with such disrespect.

How can anyone expect a doctor, or other medical professional, to focus his or her attention fully on a patient when he or she is worried about their own basic living standards?

This is not fair, it is not equitable and, for the future, it is not healthy.