Here’s some reasons why the NHI won’t work, Mkhize

Here’s a stark truth, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize: your new National Health Insurance plan just won’t work – not unless you overhaul all state hospitals.

Having one barely making the grade is just not cutting it.

I know. In three short days I got to know two of them intimately.

You, I am sure, pull up at the trauma unit of a private hospital, open a file in minutes, have a quick X-ray, see the specialist on call and go home with more than an aspirin.

I am not that lucky.

I can’t stop near the trauma unit: I walk nearly a kilometre to get there.

I can’t open a file in minutes: my first visit at a certain East Rand hospital cost me three hours; the second, two – so I decided to try a Joburg hospital. On the third day I was lucky: I only waited an hour.

Now, add at least another hour before a doctor sees you; then another two waiting for an X-ray; then another hour for the same doctor to see you again.

I’ve lost a day already and still don’t know what’s wrong with me.

You are already home sipping your third cup of tea while you wait for supper. I’m still waiting for the specialist…

Granted, your Joburg hospital impressed me. Truly state-of-the-art: all the lifts are working.

And I did notice some coronavirus cubicles filled with hand wipes and sanitiser as far as I walked. But when I left five hours later, there wasn’t a cubicle in sight?

You are obviously not too concerned about the virus: I saw maybe two, three staff members wearing masks – and I was only once asked if I wanted to have my hands sprayed.

I did – but not the other five patients who slipped by as I held up the queue.

And when a patient waits patiently, you tend to read all the notices curling on the walls. The coronavirus is not mentioned once.

But let me be fair: you do have one hygiene warning on one wall, telling me to wash my hands. Let’s fight meningitis, is the call.

But the Road Accident Fund is getting good mileage with an office in the trauma unit and at least six signs telling me how and where to claim directly.

Catching my breath outside in between X-rays and the doctor, I cornered two ambulance drivers, also maskless.

No, they assure me, this hospital doesn’t have one coronavirus case (it has).

And no, the hospital doesn’t scan patients for temperature, like at the airport. Why? They do it in the ward, he tells me.

But what really got my goat as I stood outside?

To my left is maternity admissions. From my right, two nurses come waddling past cradling a newborn wrapped only in a blanket, the new mother in great pain trying to keep up with them.

No wheelchair for her.

She walked her kilometre right through the mass of humanity sitting in the trauma unit. That same mass whose hands went unchecked. That same mass coughing and spluttering their way through their long wait.

And I’m sure she feared for her new baby.

I did.

Carine Hartman.

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