ESWATINI’S SILENT GENOCIDE

Sir,

It is sad that while government officials are living luxurious lifestyles, with so much money being spent by government on useless things, hospitals are in terrible state. Hospitals lack medication and they are failing to deliver proper healthcare services to the people. Many a time we read in newspapers that the country’s public hospitals and other health institutions do not have the much needed medication and people are forced to go and buy them from pharmacies.

Grant

Now how does government expect an elderly person who gets a E400 social grant to buy medication worth over E600? It becomes worse when that person is told to ensure that the medication does not run out. Some of the diseases emaSwati suffer from are dangerous and need specific medication so that the body may cope and recover. Already many elderly people and children are dying and some are still suffering because government is failing to give them proper medication. We know that our country has a high poverty rate, so is government not investing more in the healthcare sector?

Demands

One of the requirements of being a First World country is a top notch healthcare system that will be able to cope with the demands of the poor. Government statistics show that about 63 per cent of the people in our country survive on less than US$2 a day, below the poverty line. Most of these obviously come from the rural areas. People cannot even be able to sustain their living standards and provide for their needs. So when a patient is directed to a pharmacy to buy some certain vaccines or drugs because public hospitals lack medication, where are they expected to get that money? Are they not being indirectly told ‘go and die, for you are too poor to live in this country’?

Blame

Who would blame anyone who would then conclude that government is on a mission of reducing or eradicating the poor in this country? The crisis of medication shortages is not new, yet no reasonable steps have been taken to resolve the issue. Is this the silent genocide that some political organisations likened the healthcare situation of the country to? Is government trying to slowly wipe out the people of this nation, especially the elderly?

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