Since the Harry Surtie Hospital was opened nearly ten years ago, it has become another shining example of how the country’s public healthcare system has declined due to the ANC’s empty promises.
With not a single working air conditioner and temperatures often exceeding 40 degrees Celsius at this time of the year, conditions in this Hospital in the capital of the Kalahari are simply unbearable for patients and personnel.
The irony is that at the time of the Hospital’s opening in 2014, the then President Jacob Zuma claimed that management was “implementing effective systems for maintaining and servicing all equipment”.
The opposite is, however, true. In ten years, the lack of relevant systems and maintenance was so serious that not even an air conditioner could survive it.
That is, sadly, the least of the problems experienced by patients in the Hospital. According to the FF Plus’s local councillor, Hennie Roux, the physiotherapy department currently has no functional equipment
. As a result, the Hospital has no other choice but to discharge patients who are unable to walk after operations without crutches or other aids. So, the Hospital’s poor management affects patients even after they have been discharged.
Many of the other promises made with the Hospital’s opening in 2014 stand in stark contrast to the current reality as well.
One such promise was that the old Gordonia Hospital as well as the hospitals in De Aar and Kuruman would each house a satellite campus of the Henriëtta Stockdale Nursing College in Kimberley.
In addition, a training centre for rescue work was supposed to coordinate with another part of the Gordonia Hospital. But a decade later, there is no sign of any of this.
Yet another promise was that the community healthcare centre in Williston would get personnel housing. It was constructed, but has since been looted and literally torn down so there is nothing but ruins left.
At the time, Zuma envisioned that the well-equipped Hospital would reduce referrals to the overworked Kimberley Hospital, but it did not materialise due to overall deterioration and broken equipment.
Zuma, moreover, also boasted that the new Hospital’s number of beds would be increased from 180 to 327. This was to be achieved along with increasing the number of personnel from 350 to more than 1 000. He did not say how such figures could be considered indicative of efficiency.
The biggest irony of all is that Zuma used this Hospital and the other empty promises he made at the time as motivation for the National Health Insurance (NHI).
Even though all these ANC promises are lying either in the morgue or the intensive-care unit, government still maintains that the NHI is viable.
For the sake of good health, it is time to oust the ANC – it is time to restore and rebuild.
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