Hospitals

 

Doctor pleads for heaters for babies, gets departmental threats

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A Limpopo hospital is in such a state of disrepair that a doctor has taken to begging for donations to improve conditions for patients.

This act of caring, however, has led to the department coming down on him with threats of disciplinary action.

Patients at the WF Knobel Hospital in Ga-Matlala outside Polokwane have to brave icy winter nights sleeping in wards with broken windows, leading doctor LE Rambuwane to write a letter urging people to help him raise R15 000 to buy and install 50 heaters in the paediatric wards.

“It is with great sadness and embarrassment having to write this letter to you,” his letter starts.

“I serve in a public hospital, which lacks many things, and with very little support from the powers that be…” it continues, before his plea for the public to donate.

He hoped to raise R15 000, which would be used to buy heaters to be mounted in the paediatric wards. At the moment, he said, the patients were waiting with bated bre
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Nuwe gesondheidsorg in die vooruitsig

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Die afskaffing van bybetalings op mediese dienste is een van die aanbevelings van die voorgestelde wet op mediese dienste.

Volgens Aaron Motsoaelidi, minister van gesondheid, kan slegs 10% van die bevolking private gesondheidsorg bekostig en moet dit onmiddelik reggestel word.

Tussengangers gaan ook afgeskaf word om te verseker dat lede direk gelde aan die mediese fondse betaal. Die rykes moet nou die armes subsidieer en die jonger geslag moet die ouer geslag help en die gesonde mense moet die siek mense subsidieer. Hy sluit af deur te sê dat die oorskakeling ‘n massiewe reorganisasie van die totale gesondheidsorg stelsel  gaan wees, beide privaat en openbaar.

Medici sê mense sterf daagliks in staatshospitale, diefstal van mediese voorraad en toerusting is aan die orde van die dag.  Instandhouding van toerusting bestaan nie en personeel se betalings is agterstallig.  Die totale gesondheidsorg van die staat is in chaos en al uitweg is dat privaat mediese
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Drug Users:- How to reverse overdoses

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Find out how drug users banded together to use a simple injection to save thousands of lives. Alexander Walley was a twentysomething medical student when he witnessed the power of naloxone. It was the midnight shift at the Emergency Department at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.

The call wasn’t unusual: a middle-aged man had been found unconscious after overdosing on heroin. Walley accompanied a pair of paramedics to an ambulance, and they headed out into the cool moonlit night. After five blocks or so they arrived at one of the city’s housing projects and threaded their way across crumbling sidewalks to a shabby apartment in a dimly lit building. Inside, Walley found the man slumped against a wall, blue-skinned and not breathing. “He looked dead,” Walley says, recalling the incident 15 years later.

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Groote Schuur Hospital and UCT break ground on neuroscience centre

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Work has begun on a state-of-the-art Neuroscience Centre at Groote Schuur Hospital (GSH), which will be the hub for neuro-clinical disciplines at the hospital and University of Cape Town’s neuroscience research programme.

The centre will be home to the newly-established UCT Neuroscience Institute together with the GSH Clinical Neuroscience Centre, where researchers and clinicians will work together to treat the brain and nervous system disorders that burden the South African population.

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“UCT has invested in new interdisciplinary research institutes to address important problems facing our society,” says Dr Max Price, vice-chancellor of UCT. “The Neuroscience Institute is one of these
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Malaria still kills so many due to fake drugs

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Malaria, a mosquito-borne parasitic infection that affects about 3.2 billion people in 95 countries, has become largely a disease of the young and poor.

Due to effective medications like chloroquine and artemisinins, malaria deaths dropped an estimated 60 percent worldwide between 2000 and 2015. The Americas and Africa saw the greatest improvements.

Still, 216 million new cases of malaria were reported in 2016, the latest data available. Most of them occurred in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Ivory Coast and Mozambique. And of the 445,000 people who died from the infection, about 70 percent were children under the age of 5.

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If malaria is a curable disease with ef
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Rats feed on corpse in Nkonjeni District Hospital, KZN

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When Bonokuhle Khali died in Nkonjeni District Hospital in Zululand, nurses left his body in a dimly lit corner in the male ward where rats spent hours eating the flesh on his face.

As his body lay just metres from sick patients in the ward, the rodents scurried under and over the sheet that covered it, chewing on his nose and lips.
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Public comment open soon for The National Health Insurance Bill of 2018

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The National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill of 2018 will be published in the Government Gazette shortly for public comment.

A key provision of the bill will be the establishment of an NHI fund to pay for health services so that all South Africans have access to quality care.

“The bill seeks to establish the NHI Fund of South Africa, as a public entity, so as to provide for a sustained universal health access that is affordable and of high quality. It also sets out its functions, powers and duties,” Cabinet said in a statement following its regular fortnightly meeting.

The bill provides a framework for the active purchasing of health care services by the fund on behalf of users and creates mechanisms for the equitable, effective and efficient use of the resources of the fund to meet the health needs of users.

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Is Dr Aaron Motsoaledi fiddling while healthcare is burning?

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Despite the Life Esidimeni tragedy, non-existent oncology services in some provinces, striking healthcare workers and a damning quality standards report before parliament, Health Minister, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi seems to be labouring under the delusion that the South African public healthcare system is not collapsing.

Speaking at a media briefing, the minister said he was not aware of any scientific methods used to measure the veracity of the claims made about the breakdown of the health system.

“I am not here to challenge that because I do not know the yardstick that was used to arrive at a conclusion of collapse. Surely healthcare systems are measured on some form of scientific yardstick to arrive at any conclusion.”

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Western Cape Health Department: Tygerberg Hospital must ‘be shut down and replaced’

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The Western Cape’s biggest hospital is in such a dilapidated state that it will have to be shut down – and replaced.

This is what Parliament’s portfolio committee on health was told on Wednesday.

Head of the Western Cape Health Department, Beth Engelbrecht, told the committee the Hospital was in a dire state, its condition contributed to the billion-rand backlog in maintenance for provincial hospitals.

“Tygerberg Hospital is under severe pressure. The CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research) assessed it and said the hospital must be replaced. We have spent R700 million just on maintenance in recent years and you walk through the hospital and you can’t see it – it is sewerage lines, gas lines and water lines,” she said.

Engelbrecht said it would cost an estimated R10 billion to replace the hospital. She said the department was canvassing National Treasury for funding.

Tygerberg Hospital works in partnership with Stellenbosch Univers
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Medical deans call on government to urgently address health crisis

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The South African Committee of Medical Deans (SACoMD) has called on the government to take drastic steps to address the ongoing health crisis in the country.

In a statement‚ the committee said that despite multiple interventions on the part of the minister of health and the National Department of Health‚ it was of the view that the health system in South Africa remained in crisis.

“The Cabinet’s recent decision to place the North West Health Department under administration of the national government in the wake of the health worker protests and the appointment of the Intervention Task Team in the Gauteng Health Department to advise on a turn-around strategy are indicative of a limping and indeed failing health system‚” the committee said. “The Deans are calling on Government to take drastic steps to address the systemic failures in the provincial health departments as a matter of priority‚” it added.
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TEMBISA Hospital in Ekurhuleni – patients often have to sleep on stretchers or mattresses on the floor

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TEMBISA Hospital in Ekurhuleni serves 2,5 million people and delivers 16 000 babies a year but only has 840 beds.

This was revealed yesterday by hospital CEO Dr Lekopane Mogaladi during an oversight inspection conducted by the DA.

Mogaladi said patients often have to sleep on stretchers or mattresses on the floor.

He said the hospital and a private partner had plans to open a prefab medical ward with 24 beds in August. The CEO said the hospital desperately needs 49 more nurses but the Gauteng Health Department has only given them permission to fill four posts.

Head of nursing Wilfred Mothwane said the hospital should have at least 623 more nurses.

“Some of the current nursing staff are going to retire soon. We deliver 42 babies daily with a limited number of midwives,” said Mothwane.

DA Gauteng shadow health MEC Jack Bloom said: “Tembisa would benefit if the health department expanded Edenvale Hospital and built a medical facility in Kempton Par
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Dr Aaron Motsoaledi calls for the arrest of violent hospital protesters

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Health Minister, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, has condemned violence and disorder perpetrated by staff members at the Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital in Johannesburg, protesting against the non-payment of performance bonuses, saying the attack on the sick and vulnerable is unacceptable, and called for the arrest of perpetrators.

“Every decent human being knows who comes to hospitals. These are sick, very sick, vulnerable members of society. They are not part of these labour issues,” Motsoaledi said.

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According to some media reports, staff members were demanding payment of bonuses and increases dating back to 2016. During a protest, patients were forced out of the hospital, damaging equipment
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R127-million allocated to demolish Kempton Park Hospital

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The DA said it was shocked to learn that over R6-million has been spent on security at Kempton Park Hospital since its shut down in 1997.

This was revealed by the Gauteng MEC for Infrastructure Development, Jacob Mamabolo, in a written reply to the DA’s Kempton Park constituency head, Refiloe Nt’sekhe.

“According to MEC Mamabolo, R6 932 541.35-m has been spent by the department on guarding this defunct hospital,” Nt’sekhe said on Monday.

In addition, the MEC confirmed that the hospital would be demolished and the process will begin in September at an estimated cost of R127-m.

This hospital should never have been shut down in the first place, Nt’sekhe added.

“By having kept this hospital open, there would not have been as much pressure on Tembisa Hospital, which is clearly not coping with the influx of patients. Residents in this area are forced to make use of only Tembisa Hospital.

“R127-m is a lot of money to be allocated to the demol
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TEMBISA HOSPITAL – WOMAN WITH BROKEN LEGS STILL NOT TREATED AFTER 3 WEEKS

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The woman was involved in a car accident at the end of April and has been in leg casts at the hospital since.

Eyewitness News has learnt that a woman who was admitted to the Tembisa Tertiary Hospital with two broken legs about three weeks ago has still not been treated.

The woman was involved in a car accident at the end of April and has been in leg casts at the hospital since.

The facility says one of the two operating machines has been out of order and doctors are battling to clear the backlog.

The hospital’s Chief Executive Dr Lekopane Mogaladi said: “The numbers that are coming have actually increased. We are managing to see them. In terms of P1, we see them within five minutes. The ones who are taking too long might be the P2 and P3, [they are] people with a longer waiting period. But it’s still within the framework of the provincial benchmark.”

He says the hospital also has an issue with CT scanners.

By: EWN

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New Act could redress medical scheme sustainability issues

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Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi has hinted at a number of reforms that directly address challenges of sustainability that the medical schemes industry is currently facing.

“We know that rising costs in healthcare are outstripping inflation, and legislated steps to address this are overdue. The proposals will usher in a new set of rules for how medical schemes operate,” says Mark Arnold, principal officer of Resolution Health Medical Scheme.

“While the details of how uniform tariffs for healthcare providers will be arrived at are not expected to be addressed in the Medical Schemes Amendment Bill, but rather will be informed by the outcome of the Competition Commission’s Health Market Inquiry, this is an important step towards protecting healthcare consumers.”

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