Durban - While nursing union, the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa, has applauded KwaZulu-Natal MEC Sihle Zikalala for tightening lockdown controls in eThekwini, they have called for more nurses to be hired to assist with the province's mass screening and testing programme.
Commenting after Zikalala's announcement, Denosa's Mandla Shabangu said the fully supported the Premier's move.
"We call for hiring of more nursing staff to embark on mass testing. We are that we do not have enough workforce to combat the spread as KZN has not employed any new employees since the announcement by the president. We are further concerned about the infection rate on healthcare workers, both in private and public sectors, and we call for an intense investigation on what is it that as a province we are not doing right," he said.
Shabangu questioned whether this was due to the unavailability of PPE or lack of capacitation on the usage thereof.
"We are concerned that we might not have enough space to cater both workers and public members who need to be quarantined in our province," Shabangu said.
He said this would further strain human resources that were already depleted.
"If more patients are on isolation in facilities, their admission demands the care from the already existant human resource that must now be focusing on the new Covid-19 wards, because as we speak there is no new health care personnel employed because they are taking from the current staff to nurse these patients while the normal activities in a hospital or clinics is still continuing as normal," he said.
"We support this plan to intensify the testing and screening but we really need an urgent human resources plan otherwise our health care system is going to collapse due to overworked of health workers. While the focus is on Covid-19 what will happen to normal patients where there was shortage already? At least the province has a list of more than 10 000 qualified nurses who are sitting at home and looking for work. And the department can attest to this," Shabangu said.
He called for the national Department of Health to show support for their KZN counterparts.