[COMPULSORY LISTENING- BREAKING NEWS/ANALYSIS] While the Oscar Trial is fun to watch and be riveted by, the reality is that there are also, at the same time, critically important issues in our country happening at the moment. Dont necessarily tune out of the Oscar trial. But make an effort to read and listen and engage widely. On Power Talk today, for example, I broke a CRUCIAL public health news story. A number of doctors at Baragwanath hospital signed a letter, which will appear in the forthcoming edition of the South African Medical Journal, and which was leaked to me. These doctors, including Professor Ken Huddle who is the first signatory, demand the closing of Folateng Units at Charlotte Maxeke, Helen Joseph & Sebokeng hospitals, so that patients turned away from an overcrowded Baragwanath can be sent there, to about 200 beds currently NOT used, but preserved for medical aid patients. Folateng Units go back to 2002, and involve, effectively, the introduction into our health system of a two-tier system INSIDE the public health system. Beds, standing empty, await medical aid patients. These wards are clean, well staffed, and reserved for uptake by private medical aid patients. Yet, as Prof Huddle tells me in this audio clip, poor patients have died because they have been turned away from Baragwanath due to overcapacity at Bara. In some cases, patients share beds, and in very dangerous other cases, you can have a meningitis patient in the same ward in close proximity to a patient with XDR-TB. This all while beds are available elsewhere in the public health system in Joburg but reserved for middle class people like me with medical aid. Heres the irrationality: people like me do NOT want to go to Helen Joseph, so these Folateng Units are not creating revenue that can cross-subsidise medical care for poor people. I want to go to a private hospital, so these units are not achieving their theoretical aim. Evidence of this is the very FACT that patients are already dying when they are turned away rather than referred to the hospitals with Folateng Unit-policies in place. If these units worked, the results of the cross-subsidisation would have been felt. Thats not the case. So, I invited Prof Huddle. He tells a heartbreaking story of how this affects the morale of doctors, and most importantly means a denial of critical medical care for the poor. Kirsten Whitworth, from Centre of Applied Legal Studies, is a brilliant human rights lawyer working on the case, and narrates both the injustices of this policy - economic apartheid in our public hospitals - while telling us, also, what other tactics have BEEN tried to engage these hospitals, and government, but failed so far, and which frankly might again necessitate a combination of groundswell civil society action and legal activism. And, finally, minister Aaron Motsoaledi joined us too. He is a wonderfully honest politician I must admit. But heres the remarkable thing. When you listen to the clip, you will hear the minister immediately agreeing that the policy is unethical, and undesirable and must go. Yet, it has been in place since 2002, and by his own admission he has been aware of it for at least two years now!! When I asked whether he can give me, as a citizen, a guarantee that he will, in a short space of time, if not immediately, get rid of this policy, he himself has regarded as unethical for at least two years already, he responded, literally, by saying, Eish...I cant guarantee that Eusebius...I dont want to lie... citing contractual difficulties. But how can you not have a clear plan of action, or results already, if you have by your own admission been aware of an unethical policy - in your words - for two years? Fire your staff unable to untangle a contract after two years! The opportunity cost of this policy is that many more people have died from preventable medical causes or operations they could have had....while we are watching, myself included, the Oscar trial. And this continues as I type. PLEASE listen to this podcast. And if youre a news reporter, especially a health news reporter, I think this story deserves to be followed-up on. Baragwanath, the minister says, again by his own admission, is overburdened by having more than twice the number of beds recommended by the World Health Organisation for a hospital to function effectively. Yet, if so, why is there tardiness with building more hospitals and getting rid of policies like these Folateng Units? Certainly on Power Talk we will go back to this story after six weeks. I think other media should pick up on it too, chronicle it, analyse it, find the patients turned away, give them names and faces, and go look at the empty beds at these other three hospitals, interview the heads of these other hospitals, etc. This, more than a court case, is the kind of issue our national development depends on. After hours of laughter, I suggest we focus a few minutes on the big picture. We have a country to build. Power 98.7 Now were talking (Please share on your walls too) https://soundcloud/powerfm987/breaking-news-doctors-at
Posted on: Wed, 09 Apr 2014 21:41:14 +0000
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