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“No jobs, no vote,” shouted disgruntled nurses who marched to the provincial health department in Pietermaritzburg.

Hundreds of nurses carried placards and handed over a memorandum demanding that unemployed nurses be employed by the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Health. Nurses from the Health and Other Service Personnel Trade Union of South Africa (HOSPERSA) were part of the march.

The marchers said there were 15,000 unemployed nurses in KZN and 40,000 vacancies for nurses nationwide, according to a “study”.

But when GroundUp asked the provincial chairperson of HOSPERSA, Thamsanqa Zondi, the source of these figures, he said the figures were estimates and should not be used by the media. He said the union did not have a copy of the study.

Last year nurses marched three times demanding that the health department prioritise their demands.

United Nurses Forum president Bhekithemba Gumbi said nothing had changed. Quoting
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Life St George’s Hospital in Port Elizabeth has launched an internal investigation after the grandson of one of its patients posted photos of his grandfather soaked in urine and blood with “not one nurse to help him”.

This was despite the hospital knowing the elderly man needed 24-hour care for which he was signed up for, Jason Gordon wrote in a Facebook post on Tuesday.

His grandfather was blind and suffered from dementia.

“This is not the first time I have visited him after work to find something wrong. The first time they had inserted his drip incorrectly. It took more than 3 days for the swelling to go down,” Gordon wrote.

“This is not the kind of care I would expect when you pay so much for medical aid; this kind of thing should not be acceptable in any state or private hospital. You would expect people in the medical profession to be compassionate and want to make sure their patients are comfortab
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