South Africa: Limpopo Department of Health is overwhelmed by the number of children booked in for surgeries at Tshilidzini Hospital during the 2022 final rural health matters outreach project.
According to the data given by the Department on their Facebook page in which, they shared that Department has since booked 191 children for Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) and Paediatric surgery (Paeds) at Tshilidzini Hospital: Sixty-eight (68) booked for ENT surgery are from other districts and 60 from Vhembe District, whereas 63 booked for Paeds surgery are from all the districts.
This is a result of the hype during the ongoing rural Health Matters outreach project that seeks to reduce the surgical backlog in the province.
Tshilidzini Hospital has only 16 beds for mother lodgers, which are currently used to admit all the children booked for operations.
As a result, the Department has organised our recreational hall to accommodate all mothers who have brought their children for operations. This is only a temporal arrangement, as, after operation and observation, children are discharged to go home with their mothers.
The Department is worried that some malicious individuals might take photos and opportunistically circulate them to propagate falsehood and project both the Department and the institution as uncaring during the cause of the project.
The Department has since received calls from other mothers who are complaining to the Department about being accommodated at the recreational hall. The Department has done everything within its power to create a conducive environment where all mothers who have brought their children for operations are well accommodated.
“We have been receiving calls from mothers who wanted their children to be operated on, and we have hidden their calls. What’s worrisome is that other mothers, after their children are booked for operations, become ungrateful and make demands which are far-fetched. We are therefore making a special plea to all parents and mothers who have brought their children during this rural health matters outreach project to be reasonable when making demands and must know that their stay in the hospital is short-lived. It is through this project that we focus mainly on changing the lives of our people with the little resources we have at our disposal”, said MEC Ramathuba.
