DOCTORS VENT FRUSTRATIONS TO PM

MBABANE – Doctors yesterday ‘bled’ before Prime Minister (PM) Sibusiso Barnabas Dlamini as they boldly laid out the day to day challenges they faced as professionals.

This was during the PM’s inter-ministerial consultation with the Medical and Dental Council, Swaziland Medical Association and Medical Specialists in Swaziland where the professionals left no secrets in expressing their frustrations before the head of government.

Neurosurgeon  Dr Delisile Maseko (Ndzimandze) minced no words as she explained that specialists would always leave Swaziland because of government’s failure to pay them on time for patients who were treated under the Phalala Fund.

She said government needed to find a way of paying these specialists on time because they incurred costs during the non-payment of these bills.

She told the PM that government was still settling bills that were as old as two years, which did not work well for the people in the private sector or those who offered the specialist services.
She made an example of a certain Dr Dlamini who she said was a specialist in doing MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) who offered these services to government, but was not paid for a period that exceeded longer than six months.
She said these delays then attracted penalties because the doctors also had bills to pay.

Maseko also said the Phalala Fund needed a serious overhaul in the payment system.
She told the PM and the gathering that there was a lot of bureaucracy involved when patients needed to be treated through the fund.
“For example, there is a form that needs to be signed by senior medical officers who are based at the Mbabane Government Hospital before an emergency neurosurgery was performed and this takes time and escalates costs as it is almost impossible to get all these signatures in one go,” said Maseko.   

She said she was based at the Raleigh Fitkin Memorial (RFM) Hospital and there were two other SMO’s who were perfectly qualified to sign the forms.
Maseko said as a result, the patients after surgery, had to be treated for more side effects because of the delays and said these included bedsores, urinary problems and other illnesses because of the delay.

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