South Africa- Durban- King Edward Hospital sewer spilling outside the main gate and onto the pedestrian sidewalk, patients and passerby's have to jump over sewer streams with their hands covering their noses because of the bad sewer smell. Picture: Tumi Pakkies/African News Agency(ANA)
Prof Taole Mokoena in his acceptance speech of his position as the new health ombudsman taking over from Prof Malegapuru Makgoba, clarified a few things about the mandate of the health ombudsman according to the Department of Health.
An inspection of 696 health facilities in the financial year 2016/2017, found that only five facilities were compliant. A whopping 691 had failed the inspection. Subsequent to that inspection I don’t remember the announcement of any results of further inspections.
One would have expected that those results would have been followed by aggressive measures to establish the cause of such hopeless failures in our public healthcare system, and implementation of positive changes. But none of that followed.
In one such inspection, while I was still working at Tembisa Hospital where it was impossible to achieve the healthcare standards that we all knew were necessary to achieve high quality patient care that the populace is entitled to I ended up asking one of the inspectors what was the point of having the inspections if nothing is done to improve the alarming adverse findings. She never responded to that question. And, the situation in our public health facilities has progressively deteriorated. That is many years since I retired in 2013.
Thankfully, I now know the mandate of the health ombudsman is to receive complaints, investigate them but has no mandate to actively act on them because it is the mandate of the health department to do so. Its mandate is only to ensure that high standards of patient care are maintained.
Healthcare anywhere in the world is one entity where governments incur the largest share of their budgets costs. Is it possible to achieve high quality patient care without adequate human, material and financial resources?
If the government is ignorant of effective governance why can’t the ombudsman’s office – as mandated to oversee the provision of high standards of patient care –intervene in its capacity by engaging the government to force it to ensure that the right resources are available.
This will ensure that they also achieve their own mandate of providing acceptable standards, instead of throwing their arms up in despair and telling anyone who pleads for their intervention that financing government responsibilities is outside their mandate. When all you are asking for is that their mandate is to influence the government decisions positively, so that everyone can achieve their mandate.
It is wrong to be sitting with problems that were identified way back in 2016/17 which continue to worsen, while people continue to receive undeserved salaries while everyone passes the buck and continues to refuse to take responsibility.
Extreme underfunding has been for many years the reason that our healthcare system is collapsing. Right now the Eastern Cape, with Frere Hospital in East London unable to perform operations except emergencies, because there is no stock in the theatres, even something as basic as syringes. The relationship between the government and the ombudsman has to be reviewed.
I have tried my best to influence changes in health care in this country, without being paid a cent and using my own resources. So, it is only fair that more should be expected from the Office of Health Standards Compliance.
* Cometh Dube-Makholwa, Midrand.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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