Cape Town – Health Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize has called on South Africans to enter the nursing profession as the country will be needing more.
He made the call during a visit to the province yesterday to assess its readiness to deal with a peak in Covid-19 cases.
His first stop was to the Cape Town International Convention Centre, which has been converted into an 850-bed facility that will take in patients from across the Cape Metro. It will also be the largest of four field hospitals that are in various stages of readiness.
The Western Cape has 2 2087 confirmed cases, 521 deaths and
11 431 recoveries.
“It is quite clear that there is a need for us to increase our staff members. The province has been able to deploy 800 nurses, as some of the nurses have tested positive and they have been quarantined.
"It is necessary for us to increase the numbers of our staff. We are now calling on people to register for employment as nurses from different parts of the country.
"We will be going all out to make a further call on the private sector to register into our system, so that we can increase the number of nurses.
“We are also calling on those who recently retired to come on board. There is a way of managing vulnerability and risks inside the health services, so that those who might have a high-risk profile will be put into areas that do not become a challenge and that is part of managing Covid-19.
“The second aspect of the doctors we already deployed a number of doctors from Cuba and we have been welcomed by some of them here,” said Mkhize.
He also thanked the MECs from different provinces for the warm reception for Cuban doctors in the country.
“Two weeks ago I had a meeting with medical associations and they raised the issue of some doctors who are wishing to be deployed.
"We did indicate that we had a situation where doctors could be employed and at the end of it we found that we could not fill all the positions because there were not enough doctors,” said Mkhize.
Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Patricia de Lille said yesterday that 1751 facilities had now been identified as proposed sites representing more than 129 600 beds across the country - in all 44 districts and eight metros.
Of these 1 751 facilities, 642 are state-owned facilities and 1109 are privately-owned.
In the Western Cape there are 358 facilities that have been identified representing more than 27500 beds.
“Some of these sites have been assessed and confirmed as compliant and been activated and the Department of Health is in the process of assessing the remainder of the sites.
“To date, 395 facilities nationally have been assessed by the DoH and are compliant according to the Department of Health’s requirements for quarantine facilities, representing 35 759 beds.
“In addition to state-owned and private facilities, there are also sites from state-owned entities (SOEs) such as the Transnet and Eskom facilities and these have been activated and managed by the SOEs,” De Lille said.