A real leader would be calling for the heads of those responsible for the absolute circus which is the province’s health department.
If Gauteng’s political leaders were capable of feeling shame, they would probably never be able to show their faces in public.
Anyone capable of shame would be appalled by the knowledge that their ineptitude was the reason a hospital patient had gone viral on social media for exposing the decay in our public healthcare system, leading to outrage from around the world.
A real leader would be calling for the heads of those responsible for the absolute circus which is the province’s health department.
This is a department that recorded R2.26 billion in irregular expenditure in the 2022/23 financial year, along with R15 million in fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
This same department failed to spend R2.7 billion of its budget while hospitals are falling apart, doctors and nurses are overworked and burnt out due to staff shortages, and patients are dying due to inadequate care.
This is the same department that had no qualms in suspending a young doctor just over a year ago, when he complained about some of the very same conditions which have now gone viral in the series of videos by Tom London.
Instead of sacking those responsible for the rot, our leadership has decided to play to the gallery and visit the aggrieved London, offering little more than platitudes.
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Instead of ensuring the entirety of the province’s budget is spent properly and within legal bounds to improve the conditions of all its patients, they fake outrage and promise to punish the poor doctors who can do little themselves to improve the conditions in the province’s health facilities.
Instead of accepting responsibility for the failures, they are all too willing to throw these poor healthcare workers under the bus, while failing to acknowledge that these very same doctors suffer under the same conditions.
This is because they are the ones who have to deal with abusive, frustrated patients.
They are the ones who have to work 30-hour shifts.
If Gauteng had true political leaders, they would admit that they are responsible for the rot and apologise to all users of the system, and not just those who can generate millions of page views.
citypress
www.news24.com
