Left in the dark

Thank goodness for cellphones – they can double as torches. And it’s by torchlight that staff at the rundown Batho Clinic, outside of Bloemfontein, have been forced to work since May this year.

Cables were stolen in a burglary that month. The thieves broke through the ceiling, stealing what they could, including electricity cables and a clinic laptop that holds patients’ data. Ironically, the front of this government building boasts an advertising sign for a private security company.

‘These fridges are now just cupboards,’ says a staff member.

Everyone is too frightened to be identified – they still need their jobs and they can’t trust the malice and corruption by senior officials, who use threats and fear to make whistleblowers’ lives uncomfortable. Still, they want to tell their stories because it’s impossible now to continue working and to offer any kind of quality service to their patients.

‘We use the torches on our phones to look at patients’ files or to find medicines in storerooms – there haven’t been lights for all these months. We complain, we’ve tried to speak to the HOD, but nothing gets done,’ says one nurse.

As the coldest months of the year rolled round this winter, sick patients wait in the clinic without heat. ‘We even had to run outside ourselves every now and again to get a little bit of sunshine so that we could carry on working. It was freezing in here and we couldn’t use any heaters because there is no electricity,’ a nurse says.
The clinic was forced to redirect HIV and TB patients to other clinics, kilometres away because the clinic could no longer store vaccines as they couldn’t run their fridges.

The nurse adds: ‘There is too much political influence in this province. The politicians are missing the bigger picture – they don’t care who is rendering the services to the people, or what the quality of the service is. They just look at their papers and they think their job has been done, but they don’t know what’s actually happening here.’

There are whole sections of the clinic that are now simply not used, standing in darkness. The ceiling, where the criminals made their entry has also not been fi ed, the possibility of a collapse very real. Supplies, like medical detergent, have not been delivered for months and there are constantly glitches in transport services for medicines and deliveries of other critical supplies.

‘What we found was shocking but not surprising given the extent of the Free State health crisis.’

Batho Clinic had a large scale upgrade in the last few years. It comprises two waiting areas, ablution facilities,
consulting rooms and a dispensary. But large cracks already appear on the walls, the toilet door remains closed because the toilet blocks up regularly – apparently because the department’s contractor used the wrong size pipes for the toilet plumbing. The only patients at the clinic most days are those who are there to pick up medicines for mental health disorders. The clinic used to see about 600 patients a week.

As recently as the middle of September, the Democratic Alliance’s MPL in the Free State, Mariette Pittaway, visited Batho Clinic.

She writes in her statement: ‘What we found was shocking but not surprising given the extent of the Free State health crisis.’ She also says that both Free State MEC Benny Malakoane and Premier Ace Magashule ‘remain in denial’ of the dire situation of healthcare facilities in the province.

Pittaway says in her press statement that there are rumours Batho Clinic will be closed all together. While she says there has been no official confirmation at this stage, her party would oppose any closures because of the pressure on other over-burdened clinics in the area.

A few kilometres away from the Batho Clinic is the Mmabana Phahmeng Clinic, where Batho Clinic’s HIV and TB patients have been diverted. Some of the staff have also been redeployed here. The facility is full, with late arrivals having to stand to wait to be seen.

One of the nurses, who didn’t want to be named, says: ‘I have lost some of my HIV and TB patients, they just haven’t come back to get their medicines now that they’ve been moved to this clinic.’

She adds: ‘Defaulting is very serious because of things like MDR-TB, and we don’t even have community healthcare workers anymore who can trace these patients and help them.

‘This is chaos and people are suffering. We have tried to speak to the officials to the unions, but nothing, nobody wants to listen or to help,’ she says, shrugging her shoulders.

People in the waiting room queues, meanwhile, are dozing off or eating vetkoek from plastic bags. It’s going to be another long day, but this is as good as it gets for ‘Batho pele’ in the province.