The Hospital Association of South Africa (HASA) says the country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic is something to be proud of.
The association says strong leadership and collaboration between all spheres of government as well as the public and private hospital sectors has made it possible for South Africa to deal with COVID-19 effectively.
Chairperson of Hospital Association of South Africa’s board, Dr. Biren Valodia says most hospitals in the private sector have set up dynamic modelling operations to anticipate logistical and capacity demands to ensure they were well prepared for COVID-19.
He says the pandemic has also once again highlighted the fact that there is a shortage of nurses in the country. Valodia was speaking during a virtual sitting of the Western Cape Provincial Parliament’s Ad hoc Committee on COVID-19, where they discussed the province’s healthcare system
Valodia says, “A problem that predates the pandemic, is nurse shortage. The pandemic has demonstrated the critical need to train more nurses in general and to take steps to increase our numbers of nurses, particularly with specialist skills.”
The Netcare Hospital Group’s Director of Strategy and Health Policy, Melanie da Costa also addressed the committee during the sitting. She says the service level agreements which the private hospital sector signed with the public healthcare sector have given the industry an opportunity to engage and be pro-active, in the form of a private-public partnership.
As part of the agreement, various private hospitals will treat COVID-19 patients who are referred from the public health sector, if public hospitals reach capacity.
The government will subsidise the cost of treatment for those patients, with a maximum of R16 000 per patient.
Da Costa says the private hospital sector is ready to assist with fighting COVID-19. “To date, we’ve only seen a handful of transfers coming through to the private sector. Since early July, pressure on the system has alleviated somewhat, but nonetheless, we stand ready and at your side to deal with this pandemic.”
According to the Western Cape government’s COVID-19 dashboard, the province currently has around 14 900 active COVID-19 cases. Around 86 000 confirmed cases have been recorded in the province so far with around 71 000 recoveries.
Around 2 700 people have died from the virus while just over 384 000 tests have been conducted in the province.
