As South Africa’s cumulative cases of Covid-19 breached the 300 000 mark, the BBC published a detailed investigation ‘inside filthy hospitals’ in South Africa, which it said ‘exposed an extraordinary array of systemic failures’ and ‘a health service near collapse’.
The BBC said it took weeks to put together its exclusive more than 1 800-word account of the crisis playing out in Eastern Cape hospitals.
The described hospitals where, with key staff on strike or sick with coronavirus, nurses were ‘forced to act as cleaners, surgeons are washing their own hospital laundry and there are alarming reports of unborn babies dying in overcrowded and understaffed maternity wards’.
It went on: ‘As doctors, unions and management fight over scarce resources, one senior doctor described the situation as “an epic failure of a deeply corrupt system”, while another spoke of “institutional burn-out… a sense of chronic exploitation, the department of health essentially bankrupt, and a system on its knees with no strategic management”.’
The report comes just days after President Cyril Ramaphosa told the country in a televised address: ‘Let us lay the foundation for National Health Insurance so that all people have access to the quality healthcare they need regardless of their ability to pay.’
In response, the IRR said the president’s ‘appeal … in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis to support the government’s NHI scheme for “quality healthcare” for all is deceiving when the same government is responsible for chronic failures in the existing extensive public health system’.
The IRR said: ‘Judged against the outcome of NHI trials that have delivered appalling results at great expense to the taxpayer, Ramaphosa’s claim that the de facto nationalisation of all medical care through NHI can deliver quality healthcare has no basis in reality.’
Positive cases in South Africa rose yesterday by 12 757 to a cumulative total of 311 049 (with 160 693 recoveries). Deaths rose by 107 – 41 in Gauteng, 38 in the Western Cape, 12 each in North West and the Eastern Cape and four in KwaZulu-Natal – to 4 453.
The highest number of cumulative cases is in Gauteng (112 714), followed by the Western Cape (81 556), the Eastern Cape (55 584) and KwaZulu-Natal (32 939).
The economic impact of the lockdown was highlighted in a report on a new study which found that about three million South Africans lost their jobs between February and April.
The National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (CRAM), a collaborative project involving 30 social science researchers at five South African universities, drew on a sample of some 7 000 people, who were questioned between 7 May and 27 June.
The study found employment levels dropped by 18% between February and April. Vulnerable groups, such as the poor, and women, were worst affected.
The report found that about 17 million people were employed in February, but that the number had dropped to 14 million by April. It estimated that between 2.5 million and 3.6 million fewer people were employed over the period.
It also found that one in three income earners in February did not earn an income in April. ‘The proportion of adults who earned an income in February declined by 33% which is made up of a roughly equal share of those who lost their job and those who were furloughed,’ the study said.
In a virtual televised imbizo last night, President Ramaphosa acknowledged the pandemic’s impact on jobs, and said the government was working on a ‘massive’ job protection project.
‘We are not going to ignore those people who’ve lost jobs,’ he said. ‘We are committed to focusing our efforts on an economic recovery.’