It is a bottomless pit
American president, Donald Trump, puts Namibia on the global map with his farcical statements about the small African country he called Nambia. All of the absurdity aside… he did say that we have one of the best healthcare systems and that is self-sustainable.
Yes, hold onto your hats. Self-sustainable.
It is not. Our State-sponsored healthcare system is nothing if not a bottomless pit of taxpayers' money being used for many things, the last of which is care for patients.
The sick and dying have to take their own linens… and they are lucky if there is a bed. Family members are expected to stay if patients require feeding or bathing because the staff either do not have the will or the time to do so. We hear horror stories of an old man who dislocated a hip but, because no x-ray was done and nobody checked he lay for eight months and now, can no longer walk. Machines that are to drain wounds to save legs or arms, and which are privately sponsored, are switched off, such, that patients have to be moved to other facilities in a bid to save their appendages.
Wards are infested with mice and with rats, toilet seats are missing and medical waste, including blood-stained cotton swabs and sharps, lie at the ward's nurses' station, waiting for collection.
Our State paramedics are known in the industry as 'scoop and go' because they are not trained to advanced life-care status. Those paramedics are only available in private care or with the MVA Fund.
In the rural areas, patients with severe flu are given vitamin C tablets wrapped in A4 paper because both the dispensing bags and the Panados have run out. That is if the nurses can understand the patients because in the south of this country, the nurses are either from the north or Zimbabwe and speak not a word of Afrikaans.
And yet, health receives such a large portion of the budget and while we know that there is indeed effort made and work done, we still need aid and donors.
Wherever the money is going, it is not going into beds or sheets or medicines or the upgrading of our facilities. A bottomless pit indeed.
Yes, hold onto your hats. Self-sustainable.
It is not. Our State-sponsored healthcare system is nothing if not a bottomless pit of taxpayers' money being used for many things, the last of which is care for patients.
The sick and dying have to take their own linens… and they are lucky if there is a bed. Family members are expected to stay if patients require feeding or bathing because the staff either do not have the will or the time to do so. We hear horror stories of an old man who dislocated a hip but, because no x-ray was done and nobody checked he lay for eight months and now, can no longer walk. Machines that are to drain wounds to save legs or arms, and which are privately sponsored, are switched off, such, that patients have to be moved to other facilities in a bid to save their appendages.
Wards are infested with mice and with rats, toilet seats are missing and medical waste, including blood-stained cotton swabs and sharps, lie at the ward's nurses' station, waiting for collection.
Our State paramedics are known in the industry as 'scoop and go' because they are not trained to advanced life-care status. Those paramedics are only available in private care or with the MVA Fund.
In the rural areas, patients with severe flu are given vitamin C tablets wrapped in A4 paper because both the dispensing bags and the Panados have run out. That is if the nurses can understand the patients because in the south of this country, the nurses are either from the north or Zimbabwe and speak not a word of Afrikaans.
And yet, health receives such a large portion of the budget and while we know that there is indeed effort made and work done, we still need aid and donors.
Wherever the money is going, it is not going into beds or sheets or medicines or the upgrading of our facilities. A bottomless pit indeed.
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Namibian Sun
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