The Health and Allied Workers Indaba Trade Union (Haitu) has added its voice to the widespread uproar after a video emerged online, showing two security guards, in uniform, assaulting a 13-year-old patient in a ward at the Ladysmith Hospital in KwaZulu-Natal.
IOL reported on Monday that the two security guards have been dismissed after they were recording abusing the wailing patient.
In the video, which has been shared widely on social media, the patient in a hospital bed can be heard asking for forgiveness and pleading with them to stop hitting him.
In another incident this week, a nurse was arrested in Eastern Cape after he allegedly raped a patient in a toilet at the Taylor Bequest Hospital in Matatiele.
Speaking to television broadcaster Newzroom Afrika on Tuesday morning, president of Haitu, Rich Sicina said the image of the public healthcare system in South Africa has been tarnished so much so that “nobody wants to visit our public healthcare facilities”.
He said the bad attitude of some healthcare professionals, the criminal conduct by some officials, lack of equipment and medicine, and sometimes the general conduct of staff at the hospitals chiefly contribute to the tainted perception of public healthcare across South Africa.
“More often than not, as a union, your job is to be a lawyer, you are a representative, a vanguard of workers on the ground - against any form of injustice. But then, if the injustice is done by your members, I would rather be outvoted as the president of this organisation if we are actually going to be forced to defend nurses, our members even if they are wrong,” said Sicina.
“We need to send a very strong message that we are not going to represent mediocrity. What those security guards did there, and this incident (of a nurse allegedly raping a patient) is unacceptable. Those doing it, and those thinking of doing it, must know that we will actually assist the court, as a union, so that they face the music.”
Sicina said Haitu is sending a clear message to healthcare workers that their profession demands the utmost and delicate care towards patients.
“The image of our profession in nursing generally, the healthcare system in the public sector has been tarnished. Nobody wants to go to our public healthcare facilities because of gross shortage of staff, staff attitudes, there is no medication, and nobody cares,” he said.
“We need to send a strong message - we are not going to tolerate nonsense.”
On Monday, IOL reported that the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Health had taken the necessary steps after a patient, the 13-year-old boy, was assaulted by the two security guards at Ladysmith Hospital recently.
According to the department, swift action has led to an internal disciplinary process, the implicated security guards have been dismissed by their private employer and the assaulted patient has been moved to another facility.
In the one-minute-and-22-second video, part of the patient’s hospital bed is shielded with a curtain, while one side, where the security guards stand, remains open while the patient can be heard crying out.
A voice can be heard saying “... this (patient) is disrespectful, really hit them”.
It is then that one of the security guards hits the patient. He is then joined by the second security guard who wastes no time and also hits the patient.
IOL