Fix what's broken, save lives

Management at Rahima Moosa Hospital should be focusing on saving the lives of patients in their care, not busy trying to conceal information.

On Monday, SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) officials who visited the troubled Johannesburg hospital on a fact-finding mission described their interaction with CEO Dr Nozuko Mkabayi as "painful".

“It was a painful meeting. She was dismissive, she didn’t understand that our process is meant to enhance accountability to ensure that there is responsiveness on the part of the hospital to provide quality healthcare to patients,"  the commission's Gauteng head Buang Jones told our sister publication TimesLIVE after the meeting.

It is disappointing to read that Mkabayi was apparently dismissive to the officials who were there to do their job. Clearly, she sees the exposure of problems affecting proper healthcare delivery at the facility as an attack on her.

That kind of attitude will not solve the challenges the hospital is facing, she needs to cooperate with bodies like SAHRC so that issues of power outages and water cuts can be resolved.

This comes after paediatrician and gastroenterologist Dr Tim de Maayer was suspended by Rahima Moosa management last week for blowing the whistle on "horrendous conditions" at the facility.

“I wish you could come and explain to parents that their child needs an urgent computerised tomography scan of the brain but he’s going to have to wait since our scanner has been broken for nearly three months, Chris Hani Baragwanath is overflowing, and Charlotte Maxeke has had crucial parts of its scanner stolen," Der Maayer said in a letter published by the Daily Maverick last month.

De Maayer was later reinstated following a public outcry. Hospital management may argue the doctor should have raised these issues internally, and was not allowed to speak publicly as per policy.

But the problems are costing lives as children were said to be dying due to the poor conditions. It was in the public interest for this doctor, who took an oath to save lives to speak out. He should have been commended for his commitment to his job and care for his patients instead of being victimised.

Sadly, by how management is still behaving it seems they didn't learn anything from last week's public outrage or cannot comprehend the seriousness of their problems.

We call on the department to hold to account whoever is responsible for ensuring broken scanners are fixed; the three months wait is unacceptable.

It must also provide proper working generators urgently for the hospital, they cannot keep gambling with children's lives.