Lungile Langa
The murder of a Durban doctor at a hospital in Mpumalanga province last week was not an isolated incident, said KwaZulu-Natal health workers, who will march to the Durban city hall today to demand safe working conditions.
They said they did not feel safe while trying to save people’s lives at hospitals, with patients sometimes coming in carrying dangerous weapons.
The doctors were speaking after the murder of Senzo Mkhize, 27, who was stabbed by a patient, at Mpumalanga’s Middelburg Hospital last week.
Dale Creamer, of RK Khan Hospital, Chatsworth, where several doctors were held up last year, said security measures had been put in place, but these were insufficient.
He said a guard was posted outside the doctors’ quarters and one patrolled the grounds with a dog, but people could still enter the hospital carrying weapons.
Aggressive
Creamer said doctors often discovered weapons on patients when they were sedated.
“We often get drunk people coming in after they had been injured. Most of these people are aggressive.
“Recently a doctor was punched by a patient who was being stitched,” he said.
The KZN president of the SA Medical Association, Jacob Mphatswe, said today’s march would be held to respond to these and other issues affecting health-care workers.
“There have been many reports of health-care workers being assaulted, intimidated, robbed and even raped,” he said.
Last year, after the RK Khan Hospital incidents, Sama and the KZN Health Department had decided to review security services at hospitals, to install proper lighting in corridors, surveillance cameras and metal detectors, he said.
But not all these changes were introduced. Sama wanted hospitals to employ their own guards.
Health Department spokesman Chris Maxon said the department was conducting security audits of hospitals in response to the safety concerns of health-care workers and patients.