Scandalous to have so many jobless nurses
Image: Esa Alexander
One of the embarrassing stories this week comes from KZN regarding the opening of a new hospital. It was reported that about 250 nurses were invited to some form of screening tests. Instead more than 1,000 nurses turned up. This resulted in a stampede.
More than five years ago we witnessed a similar incident in the same province. One person died. The horror to me is that we have more than 1,000 jobless nurses sitting at home with nothing to do. This is in the middle of a pandemic and in a health-care system struggling to deal with overcrowding and understaffing.
In the first world, heads would roll and it would be a front page story. It is a scandal that the minister of health must answer to. Why are nurses unemployed when our clinics and hospitals are struggling to cope with increasing patient numbers?
Dr Lucas Ntyintyane, e-mail