NO ID, NO TREATMENT

MBABANE – Some health centres are said to be refusing to attend to patients who come for medical attention without national identity cards (IDs).

This follows a computerisation programme initiated by the health ministry, primarily to monitor the use of medication in government health centres.
The programme is said to have been introduced in health centres at Siteki, Nhlangano, King Sobhuza II Clinic in Manzini and Lobamba among other areas. All the patient’s information, medical records and visits are stored in the system and given a user number to be produced each time the patient makes a visit to the centre.

However, in other areas there have been concerns that some people were being turned back for not producing their IDs or at the least to give their ID numbers.
“I was turned back at King Sobhuza II Clinic for not having an ID and I went to Lobamba Clinic where again I was requested to produce an ID, or at recall my personal identity number (PIN), which I don’t know by head,” said one Simphiwe Manana.

She said in both centres she had to return home without having seen a single nurse, yet she felt she needed medical attention.    The Director of Health Services Dr Vusi Magagula said it was not supposed to be that patients are made to turn back at health facilities for failure to produce IDs. “We don’t encourage that people should be turned back in health centres,” Dr Magagula said.
Nonetheless, he said they encourag

e people to produce identity documents to ensure that the person being attended to at the health facility was indeed the person he or she claims to be. Otherwise, he pointed out that the whole purpose of this initiative would be defeated.
He said since the initiative was at its early stages, there was bound to be problems. “One reason was that we were losing a lot of drugs due to people going from one health facility to another taking medication, yet we have limited resources.

Therefore, we encourage people to have some form of ID to produce in health centres. Indeed, we will get to a point whereby no patient without an ID will be attended to,” Magagula said.
However, he pointed out that of course there was bound to be cases of emergencies. He said it was true that there were people who still don’t have IDs, but the ultimate aim was to have everyone be in possession of an ID.

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