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NOT FUNCTIONING: Staff say Brits District Hospital in North West is in a bad state. Nurses accuse the hospital authorities of violating health and safety regulations that had been highlighted in an earlier department of labour report. PHOTOs: BAFANA MAHLANGU

DANGEROUS: For 15 hours people at Brits District Hospital walked past this bloodied corpse of an unknown man in the casualty ward.

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BRITS District Hospital is on the verge of total collapse.

Earlier this month Sowetan visited the 47-bed hospital, one of the main hospitals in North West.

Sowetan spoke to several workers and nurses, whose names are known to us but preferred to remain anonymous for fear of victimisation.

During our visit, we found:

- Poorly ventilated prefab buildings being used as wards while a new structure is being built;

- The hospital's pharmacy closed on weekends and only functions during the day on weekdays, forcing patients to wait for urgent medication;

- Last year the province's department of labour threatened to close the facility after it failed health and safety regulations;

-  The hospital does not have a mortuary, resulting in delays before corpses are removed;

- Mothers are forced to sleep and breastfeed babies on stools as there are no beds to cater for them when they stay with their infants in the paediatric ward, which is also a container;

- Some wards are used as storage for gas cylinders, which are placed too close to beds, posing a fire hazard;

- The hospital has been operating without a clinical manager and an assistant director after both quit their jobs recently over objections to other managers. The hospital's accountant has also resigned.

"Those are critical positions and no hospital will run properly without them," a nurse said.

Nurses accuse the hospital authorities of violating health and safety regulations, which were highlighted in a department of labour report Sowetan has seen.

These include exposed wiring in wards, obstructions of passageways and emergency exits and crammed offices.

The report gave the hospital until November 2011 to rectify the faults, but the issues have not been resolved.

The province's labour department spokeswoman, Orpa Mathabe, confirmed the findings but said they had not gone back to the hospital since the initial report.

"A lot of things were not right there, even the electric plugs were not professionally done," she said. "There were no qualified safety representatives.

"There were rumours of a shutdown, but it cannot be done because there are patients who are relying on the hospital for service."

During Sowetan 's visit, patients were sleeping on the floor.

"It gets full here on Mondays and we are forced to take some patients to the physiotherapy ward, which is not used due to its broken machines," a nurse said.

Earlier this year the hospital opened a male circumcision programme, which closed after two months.

"We were not coping with the burden. We ended up having too many infection control-related cases and many patients came back with sceptic wounds," said the nurse.

The hospital's radiography department was understaffed and emergency X-rays could only be done given the availability of a machine operator.

Three workers are responsible for sorting and counting laundry, which is collected by a contracted cleaning company three times a week. On other days laundry workers are forced to clean linen in a single ordinary washing machine.

"We need about 10 more workers to work efficiently," said one worker.

This article was first published in the printed newspaper on 22 October 2012

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Comments

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Sat May 18 13:42:10 SAST 2013 ::

Oct 23, 2012

Pointman

Our hospitals are depressing. The poor people that have to use them also have to put up with insolent nurses and administrators. I do not use the hospitals myself but do take an employee there often so I know the conditions.
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Oct 23, 2012

SilentPartner

Im glad the author of this story said it nicely, "the new building is in progress" so lets not get carried away by the negatives. That facility is operating from an old Militory building so do people really expect it to a world class facility, come on. Yes people are affected big time b this temporary setup but this is just short term. instead crdit must go to staff thats working under a lot of pressure.
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Oct 23, 2012

cornelius

@SilentPartner - if you read carefully you will see that many of the problems have nothing to do with the fact that the building itself is inadequate, but by simple lack of strict an efficient management. We cannot condone such mediocrity if we want to move forward to a better life for all. We need a return to strict and competent management in the public sector - as matters stand thing are slowly falling apart.
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Oct 23, 2012

Arewanga

As long as our country leader is still an illiterate and umshini wan Showerhead, nothing will go right in this country. Can soimeone in ANC fire Jacob Zuma and let this country ungoverned until the next elections?
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Oct 23, 2012

Kon-Tiki

I am sure the Department of Health is out doing something. The media, especially, this article is just out for some juicy sensationalism. I was talking to Minister Motsoaledi this morning and he has promised me that he has got everything under control. He claims to have inherited a bunch of lazy people who constantly need to be kicked on the backside to get something done.
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Oct 23, 2012

ShadesOfGrey

I stay close to Brits and the perfectly usable old hospital was demolished years ago to make way for a new one. Some dodgy contractor got awarded the huge contract for doing it, but half way through the process suddenly went "bankrupt" and disappeared. By this time the old hospital was gone and there was nothing but an empty piece of land.

Now there is no old hospital, construction of the new hospital is slowly going nowhere and some tenderpreneur and his chommy in the municipal council is happily counting their ill gotten gains.

The story of our country.
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Oct 23, 2012

WarrenG

This is Africa, this is how it rolls. This is not a private hospital, so this is how we do it.
We cannot do it any better than this, so we must accept it.
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Oct 23, 2012

EMJay_001

SilentPartner and Kon-Tiki,
The "new" hospital has been in construction for years now. In fact, at some stage, work had completely ground to a halt at the site.

The problems articulated by the article have noyhing to do with the site being temporary.
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Oct 23, 2012

PigSty

This is the fate that awaits all our government hospitals and schools. the dont get maintaned or updated by the anc. it is left to the construction fairies
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Oct 23, 2012

Dzel

... and the Department of Health wants to FORCE the National Health Insurance on all of us making it unaffordable to afford medical aid and fund the programme at the same time.

People would rather stay at home than go seek help in our clinics and hospitals, that is how bad the facilities and service is.
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