80% hospitals 'understaffed'
2004-05-11 08:15
Cape Town - Eighty percent of hospitals and clinics countrywide are too understaffed to deal with the enormous patient load caused by Aids.
The more victims the disease claims, the more patients who do not have HIV/Aids will be "rejected" by health facilities, says Lebogang Letlape, chief researcher at the Human and Social Research Council.
Speaking at the second Africa conference on the social aspects of Aids research on Monday, she said there were about five million people living with Aids in South Africa at present.
This made South Africa the country with the most HIV positive people in the world. In three years' time, about 486 000 South Africans will be infected with the virus every year, she added.
Letlape and Dr Olive Shisana are doing research on the over-population of Aids patients in private and state health facilities.
Their research, which was conducted at 222 hospitals and clinics countrywide in 2002, showed that 30% of primary healthcare clinics had never had sterilisation equipment.
About 60% of the facilities didn't have equipment to test patients for HIV/Aids.
Nearly half of all patients in state hospitals were HIV positive. These patients remained in hospital for between 12 and 20 days at a time.
Letlape warned that HIV/Aids would play an increasing role in future to determine which patients have access to healthcare. She advised facilities to revise policies regarding access, length of stay and discharges to "allow all South Africans access to this service".
In another study introduced at the conference, researchers said nearly 14 000 additional healthcare workers would be needed by 2008 to ensure the success of Government's national anti-Aids treatment programme.
Rob Stewart of the Health Systems Trust said there was already a shortage of 1 786 healthcare workers at state healthcare facilities in March 2004.
The biggest shortage was for counsellors and community healthcare workers. In the next year, an additional 6 233 health workers, including 271 doctors, would be necessary to implement the plan.