NURSES DOWN TOOLS, PREGNANT WOMEN TURNED BACK

MBABANE – The health of pregnant women who check-up at Mbabane Government Hospital is at stake, if the demands of healthcare workers are not met.

At a time when they are needed the most due to the coronavirus pandemic, nurses and orderlies at the Mbabane Government Hospital Maternity Unit resorted to downing tools on Sunday and yesterday. Yesterday, they engaged in a picketing exercise over claims of a shortage in personal protective equipment (PPE) and operations were grounded. Interestingly, government is on record having said that there was enough PPE for healthcare workers. So serious are the concerns that patients were also reportedly turned back on Sunday after 5:30pm.

According to a patient, she had come to the hospital after experiencing difficulty in breathing. However, she said she was told to return the following day (yesterday) as the hospital no longer admitted patients after the stipulated time.

Struggle

The employees were found singing struggle songs while picketing at the hospital. It was gathered that they were fresh from a meeting with matrons and sisters, where they discussed their demands. Information gathered from one of the employees, who preferred to comment on condition of anonymity, was to the effect that they feared for their lives and those of their families, because they worked without adequate PPE. “Our issues involve that we wear the same surgical masks for three to five days without being provided with new ones,” the employee claimed. She shared that they were told to buy their own. She further revealed that they did not have shoe covers to protect themselves when they attended to patients. She said this was unfortunate because they were exposed as in most instances, they dealt with emergency pregnancy labour. For this reason, the healthcare worker said they needed to be supplied with proper PPE.

She went on to say they needed someone to screen incoming patients. “As we speak, we have nine staff members who tested positive for COVID-19, the 10th is a patient. Management is doing nothing about it,” the employee lamented.

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