15 TB HOSPITAL NURSES AGAINST REDEPLOYMENT

MONENI – The Ministry of Health is in a process of redeploying 15 nurses from the National TB Hospital and the medical practitioners staged a rare demonstration to oppose the move.

According to the nurses, who ditched their meals during their lunch hour yesterday to picket at the main gate of the hospital in protest over the intended redeployments of some of them, the ministry assumed that they were overstaffed, yet they were of the view that they were understaffed.

They said on Tuesday, the ministry’s chief nursing officer came to notify them that since they were overstaffed, a total of 15 nurses would be redeployed to other hospitals which were in crisis in terms of staff members.
However, they said according to their analysis, they needed more nurses in the hospital as they

were short-staffed to an extent that sometimes a nurse had to work double shift in a ward or manage two wards.
“This poses a danger to the patients as they are supposed to take their medication at specific times,” they said.

Again, they alleged that due to the shortage of nurses in the hospital, some of the medical practitioners who were on leave were recalled while those who had applied to go on leave had their applications rejected.

They said ordinarily, they had three shifts per day, per ward and in other wards, it happens that only a night shift nurse was available while at times it would have medical practitioners for two shifts.
Their argument was that the ministry should engage them so that they could unpack what was happening on the ground as opposed to making decisions based on assumptions.

On another note, they said working with patients with drug resistant (DR)-TB, it meant that they also had it but it was on latent stage.
“So, why does government want to expose us somewhere else? Again, once we get sick, we want to be compensated because chances are that we will be treated for XDR-TB,” the picketing nurses said.
They emphasised that they were against their redeployment and vowed to fight the process with all they have. They argued that it was public knowledge that shortages of nurses was a national issue and suggested that government should address that issue as opposed to redeploying some  of them.
Meanwhile, efforts of getting a comment from the Director of Health Services, Vusi Magagula, proved to be futile as his mobile phone was not available on MTN Eswatini network for the better part of yesterday afternoon. The Principal Secretary (PS) in the Ministry of Health, Simon Zwane, as well, could not be reached for a comment as his phone first rang unanswered but later on it was not available on MTN Eswatini network.

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