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HEALTH ILLS A MICROCOSM OF GOVT’S POOR SERVICE DELIVERY

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WHEN I came across the headline ‘Inexperienced doctors killing patients – matrons’ in this very newspaper last week, I somewhat expected a deafening crescendo of public protestations over government’s apparent neglect and dereliction of responsibility before reminding myself that people in the Kingdom of eSwatini have been coerced into a conspiracy of silence.

I had half expected all mediums of communication, from the official and formal mediums to today’s social media platforms, to be overwhelmed with public sentiments on this picture of a dysfunctional public health delivery system. Part of the journalism training I was recipient of, entailed focusing on the kind of issue-driven news, such as the one in focus, that kept people awake at night and thinking about what tomorrow held for them and by so doing, arousing their latent intellect. 


But then again with the happy index at rock bottom in this nation as people battle to survive harsh economic times and an unprecedentedly high cost of living coupled to disease, service delivery issues, however, much they may be immediate on their lifestyles, are decidedly not in their list of priorities. After all even communication, from the basic to the high-tech is not affordable let alone available to the majority of the people most likely affected by the wheels coming off the public health delivery system.


As I see it, if it is not a question of affordability of the means through which the masses can and should be ventilating their frustrations, it is the State’s hostility apropos free speech and freedom of expression. You dare not speak your mind because of the fear of being profiled and thereafter blacklisted, thus thrusting innocent children into the crosshairs of a vindictive political system that will ensure they do not access things like scholarships and other services funded by the taxpayer.


As it were the subject of inexperienced doctors in our public health facilities should be keeping everyone of us, of course excepting the political and social elites who routinely fly abroad for their health needs, awake at night because the next time you go to hospital might be the last mile you will walk irrespective that you might have been suffering from the common flu. And the matrons are not imagining things but lancing the boil, a fact to which I personally can attest. 


My experience was with the pediatric department of the Mbabane Government Hospital to which I had taken my child no fewer than five times before I gave up and sought the intervention of private pharmacies. I can attest to the fact that at the hospital she was attended to by two young and evidently inexperienced expatriate doctors, who upon being informed of the symptoms of the ailment then googled their smartphones for possibly a diagnosis and the requisite treatment regime. I recall that on our last visit a horrified pharmacist at the pediatric dispensary wondered why after so many visits, the child could still be suffering from the same ailment. He speculated that this may be because of a wrong diagnosis and, therefore, wrong treatment occasioned by inexperienced young doctors. He advised that we should seek intervention of senior doctors who, he reasoned, should be shadowing the young doctors to give directions until they too were experienced. But by that time I had had enough since when going to hospital one needs to budget a full day, owing to the perennial queues caused by the perennial shortage of personnel. 


Apparently the challenges faced by the public health delivery system are not just flashes in the pan but are a permanent feature. Blinded by Vision 2022 and the concomitant obsession of First World status, government has mistakenly put all its efforts in constructing aesthetically attractive health facilities without providing for adequate medical personnel and medicines. It’s as if the buildings are the panaceas to the ailments afflicting patients.


As I see it, the dysfunctional public health delivery system is but a microcosm of massive service delivery challenges faced by the nation, while government is focused on the needs and desires of the minority in leadership and the well heeled cronies in tow. In this scheme of things the people are always an afterthought, hence invariably interventions seeking to better the lives of the ordinary folk come from external sources while massive domestic resources are focused on building a military machine to maintain the so-called peace, as well as uneconomical projects, which are social misfits given the levels of poverty, that - come 2022 - would project the country as a First World nation.


If government was people driven its focus should be on education, agriculture and health, which are the primary catalysts for the trajectory towards achieving Vision 2022, and not on the military and wasteful projects.

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