The right to health care is constitutionally enshrined. All citizens are entitled to it.
The state has an obligation to ensure that everyone has a right to access adequate health care.
This has been made plain in the solid jurisprudence on socio-economic rights the Constitutional Court has crafted over the last few years.
However, this right is being violated at some of South African hospitals.
That such violations happen more than 15 years since the adoption of the Constitution is an indictment on the new order.
The case in point is Brits District Hospital. As our report showed yesterday, the hospital is literally on the verge of collapse.
Among other things, corpses are removed from wards after lengthy delays, posing untold health hazards, mothers sleep and breast feed their babies from stools because of a serious shortage of beds in the paediatric ward, while equipment, including gas cylinders, is placed too close to beds, posing a fire hazard for patients and staff.
Other health hazards include exposed wiring in the casualty and physiotherapy wards, and along busy passageways.
It seems as if the salient aspects of the Hippocratic Oath have been disregarded at this institution, such as to pledge one's life to the service of others with one's interests not superseding those of the patients.
Still on the oath, those running this hospital seem to be disinterested in protecting the patients from harm and injustice, nor are they interested in trying to prevent and cure illnesses, as far as the prevailing conditions show.
It has come as no surprise that patients who had come for simple procedures such as circumcision have returned with septic wounds.
The people of Brits, or anywhere else where there is an unnecessary deficiency, are being denied, deprived and abused.
While paying millions for staffers' negligence - in cases including botched surgeries that have led to patients being maimed or perishing - exposing patients and the public to danger due to inhospitable settings is downright uncaring.
This evolving crisis at this and other centres where such conditions are prevalent are like a societal wound, which should never be allowed to fester.
That the improvements in health are among the top priorities of President Jacob Zuma's government is well and good.
But it is about time citizens experienced the promise. Brits District Hospital needs some urgent rescuing, for it is a risk to the very lives it is supposed to save.
Rot in our healthcare
The right to health care is constitutionally enshrined. All citizens are entitled to it.
The state has an obligation to ensure that everyone has a right to access adequate health care.
This has been made plain in the solid jurisprudence on socio-economic rights the Constitutional Court has crafted over the last few years.
However, this right is being violated at some of South African hospitals.
That such violations happen more than 15 years since the adoption of the Constitution is an indictment on the new order.
The case in point is Brits District Hospital. As our report showed yesterday, the hospital is literally on the verge of collapse.
Among other things, corpses are removed from wards after lengthy delays, posing untold health hazards, mothers sleep and breast feed their babies from stools because of a serious shortage of beds in the paediatric ward, while equipment, including gas cylinders, is placed too close to beds, posing a fire hazard for patients and staff.
Other health hazards include exposed wiring in the casualty and physiotherapy wards, and along busy passageways.
It seems as if the salient aspects of the Hippocratic Oath have been disregarded at this institution, such as to pledge one's life to the service of others with one's interests not superseding those of the patients.
Still on the oath, those running this hospital seem to be disinterested in protecting the patients from harm and injustice, nor are they interested in trying to prevent and cure illnesses, as far as the prevailing conditions show.
It has come as no surprise that patients who had come for simple procedures such as circumcision have returned with septic wounds.
The people of Brits, or anywhere else where there is an unnecessary deficiency, are being denied, deprived and abused.
While paying millions for staffers' negligence - in cases including botched surgeries that have led to patients being maimed or perishing - exposing patients and the public to danger due to inhospitable settings is downright uncaring.
This evolving crisis at this and other centres where such conditions are prevalent are like a societal wound, which should never be allowed to fester.
That the improvements in health are among the top priorities of President Jacob Zuma's government is well and good.
But it is about time citizens experienced the promise. Brits District Hospital needs some urgent rescuing, for it is a risk to the very lives it is supposed to save.
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