Opinion
By Fanzo Skhova
22/July/2016
The youth of our country are the future. This is a relevant statement on the back of youth month in Mzansi.
My story today is about the polar end of youth – the elderly. The elderly are historically a valuable source of knowledge and wisdom in most if not all communities regardless of race, colour or creed. It therefore is saddening to observe that we pick allegations of professional people who see the elderly as a symbols of disgust. As though that is not insult enough, some have identified the elderly and sickly as a source supplementary income.
We have heard countless stories of horrific and inhumane happenings at healthcare centres and hospitals in historically disadvantaged areas of South Africa led by hospitals like Natalspruit, Baragwanath (Chris Hani), Tembisa, Mamelodi and Jubilee Hospital in Temba. Naturally, nurses are meant to treat patients of an assortment of ailments that drive them to these points of care. However, increasingly, nurses have taken treatment one notch up by adding verbal abuse, neglect, poor diagnosis, refusal to admit, treat or keep patients in public hospitals, clinics and healthcare centres. Many reasons are attributable this behaviour, ranging from lack of resources, poor training for healthcare workers, poor condition s of services including poor remuneration, infrastructure, and thin human capital.
I write this today because nurses have in fact changed the game. They have moved multiple levels up the devil’s ladder at a range of neglect all the way down to instructing family members to take home with patients who are terminally ill. This they do so that these patients do not become a burden to them as some cannot bath, feed or transport themselves to lavatories or bath area. That itself is a filthy-hearted attitude and wickedness commensurate to culpable homicide. What pierces the nerve is whispers that allegedly healthcare professionals collude with business men and women in the funeral services industry to embellish corpse numbers. I declare and decree that if State Capture is a sin, this is a whole truckload of a deadly sin. How the hell people in their appropriate frame of mind collude to fast-track death is beyond human imagination.
Word coming from community members is that recently, nursing staff blackmailed a family member by discharging his terminally ill elderly parent and threatening to inflict officers of the law on the family member charges of neglect and abandonment of a sickly or vulnerable person. The trusting and acutely ignorant man did as directed and two days later, Heavenly bells rang for the sickly 87 year old one. You would have observed that I have been referring to these wizards as “healthcare staff”. I know they are nurses and doctors. But perhaps that is where the trouble starts. They forget to remember that their primary professional assignment, to which they made an oath, is to provide healthcare. That includes nursing patients.
Nursing derives origin from Latin “nutrire” or “to nourish” in English. When you nourish something, you provide it what is necessary for life, health and growth. Merriam Webster defines nursing as “the job of taking care of people who are sick, injured, or old.” The conduct of these nurses is equal to relinquishing their duties which in any language amounts to gross misconduct. Above all, it is wicked as it is criminal to do so because there is material gain on the end of the episode. Mainstream media have been raising attention to this scourge by even labelling certain hospitals around the country as “hospitals of death” and similar disgraceful names for a while now. Natalspruit used to sweep figurative awards for registering most cases of deaths, negligence, maltreatment and many other unpleasant nouns. They are not alone in this losing team.
We call upon those who sit in positions of appropriate height to pursue these allegations and save lives. Nurses are professionally and physically capable to nourish and provide what is necessary for life, health and growth. We do not expect them to nourish their personal income by inducing death. Such an option to augment personal income defines the top end of ruthless and deadly corruption inseparable in nature from peak scenes in Wrong Turn 5. That, if you ask me, it is civil war. Black-on-black smooth violence on the majority of previously disadvantaged people who cannot afford medical cover.
This kind of conduct unnecessarily validates the unfortunate perception that anything state-owned is inherently dysfunctional and ineffective. It is saddening and sickening that this kind of conduct is unleashed on the vulnerable members of society. Victims of this bad behaviour are often pregnant women in labour, babies and children as well as the elderly. These are regrettably, the group that we all should invest all our efforts to caring for and protect at all times of the chronometer. Come on! You can do better than to stretch your greed to extents of setting death on overdrive. That’s blood money!
The views expressed in this article are not necessarily those of Moretele Times
