Cry the Horrible Healthcare Crisis

Cry the Horrible Healthcare Crisis

The wait, the many stupid tests, the sometimes extremely awkward questions, medications, and needles. These are things that most people hate about going to the doctor. Some people are even scared of doctor's visits and will do anything to get out of them, but what if you didn’t have doctors offices to go to? What if you couldn’t receive proper health care? What if in the very few health care facilities you did have were only equipped with a chair and a blood pressure machine? For the public sector health care patients in South Africa, this isn’t a ‘what if’ scenario. In the Western Cape medical facilities are so sparse that the nearest one could be up to 21 miles away. Not just your average trip to Kaiser is it? These few facilities that do exist are most of the time incompetent and understaffed leaving people to die or with extremely uncomfortable illnesses due to improper healthcare.

From 2012 to 2016, 40% of South Africa's health facilities were examined. Only 2%, which is about 40 out of the 1887 health care facilities, scored an 80% or above on their compliance tests. Around 660 of these facilities scored 39% or lower, leaving the rest of the inspected facilities somewhere in between (Savides & Govender). These facilities lacked necessary things like running water, toilets, proper medical equipment, sterile medical equipment, and even kept expired medications on their shelves. Most also lack practical things such as heating and cooling systems leaving patients who are ill waiting in waiting rooms which can reach up to 8 degrees higher than the outside temperature (Studies).  If these are only 40% of facilities that are sparsely scattered around South Africa, it makes one think about the remaining percentile of facilities and what can be done to help.

While it isn’t bad enough that there are little to no competent healthcare facilities, there is also the issue of staff. In some areas it can get so bad that there are only 1.5 medical specialists per 100,000 people, one dentist for every 5000 people, and one psychologist for every 100,000 people. (Cullinan) Due to no government support for health care there is a crisis of “unprofessional behaviour, poor staff motivation, sub-optimal performance, and unacceptable attitudes of health workers towards patients, all of which compromise quality of patient care and health service efficiency.” (Cullinan). The Clewe clinic took years of pleading to convince the government to build. (Savides & Govinder) In the Western Cape the money that was supposed to go towards healthcare, was used by the government for other things. Overall it can be seen that the staff nor government is not doing anything to help this dire situation.

Now the next time you have to go see Dr.Whatshisface and the wait is a little long, think of the millions of people without proper healthcare in South Africa and think twice before you complain.

Works Cited

And SUTHENTIRA GOVENDER, MATTHEW SAVIDES. “Why State Medical Facilities May Be Bad for Your Health.” "Sunday Times", Sunday Times, Jan. 2016, www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/stnews/2016/05/01/Why-state-medical-facilities-may-be-bad-for-your-health. Accessed Mar. 2017.

Cullinan, Kerry. “Staff Shortages, Poor Leadership Cripple Healthcare.” "Health-e", Health-e, May 2016, www.health-e.org.za/2016/05/05/staff-shortages-poor-leadership-cripple-healthcare/. Accessed Mar. 2017.

"Studies from University of Pretoria in the Area of Environmental Research and Public Health Described  (Indoor Temperatures in Patient Waiting Rooms in Eight Rural Primary Health Care Centers in Northern South Africa and the Related Potential ...)." Health & Medicine Week, 3 Mar. 2017, p. 5993. Global Issues in Context, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A482873921/GIC?u=los42754&xid=c98c2029. Accessed 15 Mar. 2017.