The Free State’s health sector needs to go back to the simplest basics of primary health care, Free State premier Ace Magashule said on Thursday.
“Nurses must work, they must be on the streets, in clinics and in hospitals,” said Magashule at the opening of a Primary Health Care Re-Engineering Summit in Bloemfontein.
Magashule said households must be visited and a new focus on health education was needed. He called on nurses to go back to the former system of visiting schools to vaccinate pupils and to visit homes to teach about health issues and give care.
“Households must be visited, people must not queue for tablets.”
He said to do this the Free State would need more skilled, competent and “real” health professionals in the provincial health sector.
“You need more nurses and doctors and less clerks.”
Magashule said in the past a baby was born in the clinic with the assistance of health professionals but that these days people were running to hospitals for child birth.
Also the Free State needs more well-equipped, resourced clinics at community level, he said.
Outcomes for the summit would help in improving the “turn around” time for patients at hospitals, he said.
The province's health workers would also weigh in on how to eradicate long queues and enhance the safety of patients and doctors at hospitals.
“We must make sure there is medicine availability at hospitals, we must integrate our community workers on the ground,” said Magashule.
The premier urged the Free State health sector to work as a team. He said it was wrong for a sector to start “from scratch” every time a new MEC takes over the department.
“We have failed as people to plan properly.”
Magashule said a service delivery structure such as the Free State health department must be able to move forward with services, even if its political head gets changed. – Sapa