Positive moves in public health

WHILE overcrowded hospitals and clinics, linen shortages and long waits are still the order of the day at Nelson Mandela Bay’s public health facilities, there has been a quiet wave of positive turnarounds that bode well for public health in the city.

As we celebrate with Melisa Mupoperi on the birth of her little boy, Emeka, after a long struggle with fertility, her case is also indicative of a major shift to more specialised healthcare in the city’s public hospitals.

When the head of obstetrics and gynaecology, Dr Mfundo Mabenge, designed the first training programme for specialists in his department earlier this year, he made space for the doctors to be trained in fertility issues. Up to then this was not something the state doctors could assist patients with.

Now patients like Mupoperi are reaping the positive rewards of these doctors’ commitment.

In other areas of public health there have also been some great strides made in the last year.

From the dark days of 2012 when the head of the department of pediatrics, Dr Lungile Pepeta, sounded the alarm that hundreds of babies were dying in their care because of a lack of doctors and nurses, the doctors are now saving babies from as young as 25 and 26 weeks premature to the great relief of the mothers in their care.

It is very encouraging to see that doctors at the Port Elizabeth Hospital Complex are trying their best to make sure that, despite the large number of patients they have to see, the services offered by the public sector hospitals are equal to those in the private sector.

Coupled with plans to start a medical school at NMMU, the recent extension of medical academic programmes through professorships offered to specialists at Port Elizabeth’s public hospitals provide more than just a glimmer of hope for a day when even the poorest of the poor will receive care equal to those with medical aids.