Comprehensive sex education a must in SA

I READ the article “Why our public health-care sector is riddled with flaws” by Nadine Dirks in the Pretoria News yesterday with interest.

She is quite right that the burden on the public health-care system means patients are not given the required time to have their health issues managed.

It all gets back to what I've been preaching for years, and that is that there are too many of us and the system simply can't cope. Especially when many hospitals we see are dysfunctional.

There was a recent media article about a rural hospital with 58 maternity patients in a ward for 25. So half the women were on the floor. They mentioned that there was a CTG machine to monitor the new babies, but for months the machine didn't have paper so couldn't be used. This is the type of thing that patients are up against in our dysfunctional hospitals.

But Ms Dirks says there should be comprehensive sex education. Well once again I have been writing about that ad nauseam. Every school should be teaching our kids how not to fall pregnant. We have one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in the world.

We also need many more clinics doling out contraceptives, but the people running them need to be more sympathetic.

It's no good having nurses in these clinics who feel through whatever religion they practise that they are not allowed to do abortions, or hand out contraceptives.

If so, they shouldn't be working at these clinics. We've seen this many times with nurses showing no empathy or sympathy for a young person, and sending in their ear.

As Ms Dirks says: Health care is a human right and sometimes the solution is as simple as being kind,compassionate and listening to patients. Bring back matrons into the hospitals to keep control of their nurses.

We've seen some horror stories on Carte Blanche of nurses being really unkind and uncaring to their patients. But as usual I don't hold my breath that anything will change as this has been going on for years.

We never in good old South Africa learn from our mistakes. them away with a flea