Services at the Dora Nginza Hospital, in the Zwide township of Gqeberha in the Eastern Cape, have been severely strained as a nurses’ strike continues.
The nurses are demanding that hospital management deliver more beds and provide more staff to maternity wards.
Labour union for nurses, Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (Denosa) says some patients in the maternity wards were removed from beds after just giving birth in order to accommodate patients in labour.
All of this while other patients slept on the floor or benches.
DENOSA’s provincial secretary in the Eastern Cape, Veli Sinqana, says the union is advocating for both patients and employees.
“We’re in a situation whereby there’s no equipment. We have the problem of short-staffing, and the problem of overflow, particularly in the maternity ward. At Dora Nginza, you would have noted that there were [protest] actions over the week, and part of the actions was caused by the challenges within the management and within the Department of Health at large,” says Sinqana.
