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2 CAREGIVERS DIE AFTER CONTRACTING DISEASES

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MBABANE – These women work in small groups in their communities providing healthcare to those in need but nobody seems to care about their health and needs.


The women, community caregivers, place themselves at risk of contracting diseases from the people they assist as they are not provided with latex gloves and are forced to use their bare hands.


This has resulted in the deaths of two community caregivers at Herefordds, Northern Hhohho.
At Lubulini, an elderly woman is said to have also died after contracting a sickness from her bedridden granddaughter whom she was forced to care for.


They have been forced to devise new strategies in dealing with the sick within their communities as they are without a number of amenities that make their service delivery easier.


This, they said, was done in a number of methods which include the use of plastic bags to bathe the sick, mostly who are bedridden and are unable to care for themselves.


They also lamented how they are also without diapers, medication such as painkillers and dehydration salts yet the people they normally attend to are those who are HIV positive, have TB and are bedridden.
A caregiver from Herefords Constituency was at pains explaining how in her area, they get about 20 painkillers two sachets of oral dehydration salts.


This is despite that the community has a number of affected people. 
 Toby Shabangu said they neither get gloves nor diapers for those who are bedridden.
Given the tough conditions they work under, Shabangu said two caregivers she worked with contracted HIV/AIDS and later died.


She explained that they worked under trying conditions that required that they should be protected but it wasn’t the case.
“We attend to people who are bedridden and use plastic bags for wrapping bread to cover our hands. Don’t you think we expose ourselves trying to help others,” she asked rhetorically.


Sharing Shabangu’s sentiments was Khombisile Mamba from the Lubulini Constituency.
She was close to tears when she elaborated the deficiency in the supply of resources they needed when going about their duties.
Mamba said they get four pair of gloves, a few packets of dehydration salts, a sachet with 20 pain killers and condoms.
With these items, she said she administers home care to 24 homesteads with an average of seven people apiece.
She noted that given that they get four pairs of gloves, it was hard for them to be protected throughout the course of the month. Instead, they reuse the gloves so that they could last them.


“Most of my patients are HIV positive and are bedridden, so attending to them exposes me to the virus.”
She said given their trials when offering basic health care, they end up using old clothes as diapers for those who are bedridden.


From this, Mamba said, one elderly woman died as she ended up washing the linen to change her bedridden granddaughter.
“She did not have gloves to protect herself and there were no disposal diapers, she would wash the linen and got infected at the end.”
These issues are not unique to the rural areas as Tsekla Gwebu, from the Mbabane West Constituency, shared testimony of how frustrated they were due to the lack of resources.

 

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