With more resources than other provinces, health workers in Gauteng still say they do not have enough protective equipment to ensure safety when working with Covid-19 patients
Dikolomela-Lengene said the union doubts the readiness of the health sector, questioning whether nurses had been sufficiently trained. “It does not help not to give them PPE if you do not show them guidance on how to wear it and take it off. We cannot take it that every nurse worker knows. Remember, this pandemic is not in any book. How we deal with it is coming from a point of figuring out as we go. Nurses are not equipped. They are not ready.
Besides equipment, Dikolomela-Lengene said there is a reluctance to test nurses in the public sector. The union is pushing for every nurse to know their status because they could spread the virus to people in their care.spoke to in Gauteng said they had personal protective equipment but their main problems were not being tested for Covid-19 and not being told what is happening in the facilities where they work.
The nurse said a ward is reserved for Covid-19 patients, but other units in the hospital are functioning as they did before the outbreak and the virus could spread from patients to nurses — and from nurses to other nurses. Another nurse in Pretoria said: “I feel like we are ready and equipped, but you will never know, but according to our understanding, we are.”
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