Health system needs urgent attention, not racial debate

There are always those who seek to make political, or racial, capital out of human tragedies, so it is no surprise that there were plenty of people commenting this week that it had to take the suffering of a white man, Tom London, to bring to public attention the awful situation in our state hospitals.

This happens daily to black people, the argument ran – and that is true. It is also true that because London, a veteran radio broadcaster, was media-savvy and had an outspoken group of friends and followers that the media – and not just those perceived as being “white-owned”, remember – paid attention.

Watch the video below:

By reducing issues to ones tainted by race, though, these arguments tend to lessen the valid demand from society – all of society – that the ANC government must sort out its degenerating public health system.

This is a sector plagued by problems, at the heart of which is lack of funding – for personnel and facilities – caused because hundreds of millions of rands have been looted.

The example of the Tembisa hospital, where systematic and large-scale theft was the order of the day, comes to mind.

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When courageous department of health employee Babita Deokaran started probing this, she was assassinated by a hit squad.

The lack of resources, coupled with the long hours and awful conditions in which doctors, nurses and other hospital employees are forced to work in state facilities, goes a long way to explaining why they take out their frustrations on patients.

Yet, as Wits medical school dean Prof Shabir Madhi points out, these health care professionals – some of whom are students still – should remember the oath they took to “treat patients with dignity, compassion and respect”.

These are the important issues – not the ethnic origin of the person who aired them.