The Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital, the largest hospital in the southern hemisphere with a bed occupancy rate of about 3,200, is in distress. As an academic and referral hospital receiving local patients and those from other provinces and neighbouring countries, it is overburdened.
It is clear that Bara qualifies for an enormous budget allocation to pay the salaries of about 6,760 workers, including specialist doctors. The budget must adequately source and maintain equipment, linen, ablution facilities, and dietary needs for patients.
The clearest indicator of the size of the budget needed can be seen from the number of loaves of bread they need to buy every day to feed 3,000 patients. Keeping up with the linen requirements is a significant headache, as some seriously ill patients often wet or soil themselves. But for a hospital that hardly has enough linen, it is hard to care well for the patients.
The problem is not confined to Bara as many other hospitals face the same problem. This is an urgent national crisis that needs all hospital managers to put their heads together. A national fund should urgently be established because state coffers have long dried up after the relentless corruption involving billions of rand. — Cometh Dube-Makholwa
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