Visit our hospital and vomit. That's the message from a senior medic at Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital.
Nothing bloody well works in that pigsty. No clean sheets. No soap. No toilet paper. No towels. Stuff all.
What makes life utterly impossible for doctors is the streams and streams of HIV positive patients coming in every day on top of an already huge caseload of patients with no basic facilities.
It's been proposed several times that Aids infection should be treated in completely separate facilities from those for the non-Aids infected public. Why should doctors be exposed to Aids-infected blood without even knowing about? A routine HIV test to separate the infected from the non-infected would be the answer, with separate facilities for each group.
One supposes that would be politically incorrect. Sod that. Why should people with Aids be put on a pedestal for their promiscuity? They should get a boot up the arse instead.
In the meantime, the guvmunt offers medicals a measly increase which they promised last year and reneged on. Small wonder that doctors don't trust them.
If the guvmunt can't make money out of something, it simply ignores it.
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Johannesburg - A senior specialist at Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital in Soweto on Tuesday challenged the public to accompany doctors on hospital rounds.
"This [labour action by doctors] is not about inadequate lampshades in on-call bedrooms that doctors never see once on a 32-hour shift," wrote William Edridge in a letter to The Star newspaper.
He was reacting to public criticism of doctors and other medical workers who embarked on an illegal strike last month to protest against low salaries and bad working conditions.
Acknowledging that it was a "very difficult task" to administer public hospitals, Edridge said this had always been the case.
"But when daily meetings at Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital highlight broken equipment, unpaid maintenance contracts, absent intravenous fluids, absent essential medicines, unpaid nursing overtime and subsequent reluctance to work extra shifts to maintain a bare minimum staff complement, junior doctors feel that... inefficiency is not being exposed.
"Add to this the phenomenal extra burden of HIV and the increasing numbers of patients pouring through the doors...
"This is about appalling conditions and impossible shortages that turn a daily struggle for professional survival into a nightmare.
"I challenge anyone who believes that young doctors are not working well enough to go on call with those doctors," said Edridge. The SA Medical Association is this week holding secret ballots to determine whether its members accept or reject a revised wage offer by the government.
Meanwhile, the KwaZulu-Natal MEC for health, Sibongiseni Dhlomo, published a full-page advert in newspapers on Tuesday, updating the public on talks between the government and trade unions following the crippling strike by doctors countrywide.
It said that "doctors from throughout KwaZulu-Natal earlier met and on their own decided to accept the latest government offer subject to further twigging [sic] to improve it".
The provincial department also confirmed the letters of dismissal that had been issued to 296 doctors in KwaZulu-Natal would be "withdrawn without prejudice". These matters were decided at a meeting on July 2.
1 Opinion(s):
Its very simple. If I was a doctor and I did not like the deal I had from my employer I would walk away from it. No jumping around, union BS and long explanations. No collective action either. Do your own thing. Quietly walk away. Let the boons sort out their own mess.
Almost all of this patients voted for this results anyway.
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