56 staff test positive at Eastern Cape hospital

The staff members from a number of medical wards tested positive last week.
Image: 123RF/Dario Lo Presti

Frontier Hospital staff in Komani (Queenstown) fear for their lives and are demanding that the hospital be closed to the public after 56 employees, including doctors, tested positive for Covid-19.

The staff members from a number of medical wards tested positive last week after tests were done by the health department.

The Democratic Nurses Organisation of SA (Denosa) said some Covid-19 patients had been transferred from the Komani Psychiatric Hospital and admitted at Frontier. But the health department said there must be no discrimination on “who has come with the virus”.

Denosa regional chair Andisile Pampila said they were struggling to cope with so many  staff members testing positive, and nursing mentally ill patients at Frontier created extra challenges for hospital staff.

“People with mental challenges won’t comply with these Covid-19 regulations so they end up roaming around the hospital. They do not even wear masks, and the nurses end up having to attend to those issues as well,” he said.

In May, Frontier staff downed tools, demanding they be trained to deal with Covid-19 patients and a joint operations committee that included organised labour representatives be established. They also called for the removal of the CEO, Sindiswa Tywabi.

“The new management has arrived without a plan and a solution for this.

“The staff who are now at the hospital are working under pressure because some are on quarantine, and some in self-isolation waiting for their results. They fear for their lives. They want this hospital closed and fumigated,” Pampila said.

However, health superintendent-general Thobile Mbengashe said Komani Psychiatric Hospital was not geared to handle sick patients.

“We can’t stigmatise mental health patients and say they must be treated elsewhere. If their medical condition requires that they come to the hospital, we need to provide them with the same care.”

“The staff who are now at the hospital are working under pressure because some are on quarantine, and some in self-isolation waiting for their results. They fear for their lives. They want this hospital closed and fumigated,” Pampila said.

He said there were specialists at Frontier and trained teams who knew how to manage their conditions.

The department had established occupational health and safety and infection control teams to deal with infections among health workers, he added.

“We are also making sure there are strong teams in hospitals to make sure that infection among health workers is kept to the minimum.”

Nurses say some shifts have too few nurses on duty because of fear.

They say in some cases nine people will work instead of 30.

“We will have to verify [that] nine people have been working night shift,” Mbengashe said.

By Bhongo Jacob – DispatchLIVE

 

2 COMMENTS

  1. I was at Frontier last sunday night 14/06…no personnell to open a folder…after calling and complaining to the acting medical superintedent and him convincing me to meet him at the hospital….he ended up having to do the vitals n then handed it over to the sister in the casualty department….eventually the doctor….without doing a physical examination …requested an ECG on my daughter…..we opted to rather leave the hospital premises…..on monday evening my daughter suffered pulpatations ….we ended back at Frontier….being late and not a lot of patients we had to redoa folder …seen the sister for vitals again….she seen the doctor who this tome ordered bloods….xray and n ECG….the sisters sitting at their workstation were not wearing PPE…no gloves or face masks….and yet they attended to my daughter….the doctor at the time said the blood results would only be available after 4 hours….by then it was 2.00am
    I am over 60 years old n they expected us to sit in that hospital and wait for results….
    Today i hear that there 56 workers testing positive for Covid19…..and then i was expected to sit and wait for 4 hours….
    I AGREE FOR THAT HOSPITAL TO BE CLOSED ASAP….
    If a person goes there healthy….u are gaurenteed to come out as a corpse from that place….

  2. The nursing staff at Frontier hospital is ignorant…full of themselves…without any compassion for their calling/job.
    Very arogant….thinking they doing you a favour by attending to you….
    No ubuntu…
    Complete disregard for the Batho Pele principals.

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