Concern over bed shortages for psychiatric patients
Psychiatric patients are at a higher risk of contracting Covid-19 than the general population, says SASOP.
AS South Africa continues to battle the Covid-19 pandemic, a shortage of hospital beds for psychiatric patients is a growing concern for the South Africa Society of Psychiatrists (SASOP).
In a statement SAOP urged public and private healthcare providers to keep beds available for psychiatric patients as they work to build a large hospital bed network to cope with the disease outbreak.
Accommodating Covid-19-positive psychiatric patients in the same ward as psychiatric patients not suspected of having the virus would be “unacceptable,” said Dr Kagisho Maaroganye, a SASOP board member and public sector national convenor.
Also read: How Covid-19 affects your mental health
“Psychiatric patients have for many years suffered from a minimal allocation of national healthcare resources to meet their needs and now, at a time that they are most vulnerable, they cannot once again be denied the rights afforded to medical and surgical patients for whom such mixing of patients would hardly be considered,” said Maaroganye.
He added that psychiatric patients are at a higher risk of contracting Covid-19 than the general population due to their high levels of co-morbidities.
“The lifestyle of those suffering from mental illness increases their risk and the most frequent co-morbidities include diabetes, hypertension, obesity, smoking, and addiction. These medical conditions not only escalate the risk of contracting Covid-19 but also the risk of mortality once infected,” said Maaroganye.
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