Health must be prioritised

| Thursday March 7, 2013 00:00

The call comes at a time when there were a number of nursing graduates, laboratory technicians, and pharmacists who were roaming the streets, but have since been absorbed into the job market to serve their compatriots.The government agrees that there is a shortage, but there are no vacancies.  The solution is for those in charge to create these vacancies and get more nurses into our hospitals.The situation is even disturbing in that pharmacies, some of them government or mission-owned, are manned by expatriates, whilst locals are unemployed and wallowing in poverty.

A few years ago government came up with a system of giving preference to locals in the teaching profession, and retiring expatriates who had done their time to take the country to where it is today.   The same can be extended to other professions such as health, auto industry, Information Technology and others to name a few.We vividly remember in the late '90s and early 2000s when hundreds of our brothers and sisters left the country looking for greener pastures in Europe and the Americas, at a time when the HIV/AIDS scourge was at its peak.Even today, we still have our young brains, in those countries, who opted to remain there upon completion of their studies because the Botswana Government would not pay them good salaries compared to their expatriate colleagues. This is a wrong approach to this critical health sector.

In the BONU argument, they reveal that when the primary health care system (clinics) under the Ministry of Local Government was relocated to the central government, some practices were not altered or amended - hence they are still there even today.It is incorrect to expect nurses in clinics to perform all duties - midwifery, general dispensing etc - whilst they also have to attend to outpatients. This multi-tasking has resulted in conflicts between nurses and patients who lose patience after waiting in long queues for hours to be assisted by one nurse or two nurses.  In some instances these conflicts end in physical attacks in the workplace or at their residential places.We urge government to give top priority to health issues, as the development of a country depends on its people's health.

We cannot have good teachers, engineers, accountants, police or even intelligence operatives if we neglect our health system.  One of the pillars of our National Vision is to have 'a healthy and productive nation' by 2016 - and there isn't much time left.

                                                         Today's thought

                           'A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.'

                                                        - Joseph Stalin