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Health unions have blamed a critical staff shortage of medical professionals and cleaners for the deaths of 10 newborn babies due to a bacteria outbreak at Tembisa Hospital.
Unions said workers face hard working conditions and feared that there could be more infant deaths.
Cleaners are essential in the health sector environment but are often overlooked by management, argued the unions.
Democratic Nursing Organisation of SA (Denosa) Gauteng chairperson Simphiwe Gada said the outbreak of the drug-resistant bacteria “exposes weaknesses in the system and qualifies what we have been crying about … There is a great need to prioritise infrastructure and staff shortage.
“We can’t afford to continue having two preterm babies [those babies born before the 37th week of pregnancy] in one cot,” Gada said.
The Young Nurses Indaba Trade Union said it was not shocked at the death of 10 neonates at Tembisa Hospital.
The union echoed what was said by Denosa.
“As long as we still have 60 beds in the neonatal intensive care unit (ICU), often housing up to 90 neonates, we are going to experience more outbreaks...
“Even if we can teach nurses and parents habits of good practice, we are still going to report about dying patients in our hospitals,” the union said.
The Gauteng health portfolio committee visited the facility on Friday to assess the situation.
Dr Rebecca Phaladi-Digamela, the committee chairperson, emphasised the need for the creation of new positions for medical professionals as well as an increase of auxiliary staff.
“More hands are needed to work in most of the wards. Cleaners are needed … there are few of them. With lots of patients coming, you need lots of cleaners. You can’t have a patient bleeding and there is no one to clean up because the only cleaner on duty is on a tea break,” she lamented.
Phaladi-Digamela said they visited the ward where the 10 babies died and the nurses explained that overcrowding was a severe problem in the neonatal unit.
“They used to have up to 100 babies in a small area,” she said.
Nurses also told the committee that things were getting better after the Gauteng health department deployed additional nurses in the neonatal unit and transferred new admissions to Kalafong Hospital and Steve Biko Academic Hospital, both in Pretoria.
DA Gauteng Shadow Health MEC Jack Bloom, who was part of the entourage, said according to Tembisa Hospital chief executive Dr Lekopane Mogaladi, the hospital had managed to control carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae (CRE) cases, which averaged two a month, from January to October last year.
But the hospital noticed a rise to five cases in November and got concerned when there were 12 cases in December.
Bloom said he was “aghast to hear that 103 extra staff posts had been approved for the hospital a year ago, but there was no funding”.
“At Ward 5, the neonatal ICU unit, staff told us that they only had 19 members but needed 40.“At Ward 4, the neonatal ward, where most of the deaths occurred, there were 44 beds and 61 babies when we visited. That December there were days when there were more than 100 babies,” Bloom said.
He said cleaning staff were all on permanent overtime at the hospital.
For example, wards 4 and 5 only had two cleaners.
Gauteng health this week confirmed the CRE outbreak at Tembisa Hospital’s neonatal unit, saying that 17 cases were reported between November 1 and December 31 last year.
Meanwhile, the SA Human Rights Commission in Gauteng said it also planned to visit the hospital tomorrow to engage with management.
The commission has been vocal on challenges faced by public hospitals over the years.
In 2018 it called for an intervention at Tembisa Hospital amid media reports of substandard healthcare, including that patients were allegedly sleeping on the floor owing to overcrowding.
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