Patients feel like they are trapped with South Africa healthcare services.

South African patients feels like they are trapped with the poor health services, because of the poor deliverance from some of the healthcare professionals. The picture indicates patients being trying to reach out for help from the health care service which is poor, but there is a promising light that is contributed by individual healthcare professionals and the poor environmental health services that are not good makes patients to be infected easily. Patients have can not go anywhere they trust health professionals with lives, and they do anything they is recommended in hoping to be back on their good functional lives. The South African health system consists of both a private health sector and a public health sector. The majority of South Africans rely on the public health care sector for their health care needs but expenditure in the private sector far outweighs that in the public sector. This scenario, exacerbated by the global financial crisis, has resulted in an over-serviced private sector and under-serviced public sector. For example, there is a patient we visited he told us that ever since he was discharged from public hospital there was no rehabilitation programme that was designed to improve his condition, this can be classified as the negligence of the health professional members. In public hospitals, rehabilitation programmes from physiotherapist in a little bit poor which sometimes leads to patients not going back for follow ups and then that leads to increment in number of people with disability.
South Africa is fortunate to have the capacity to train skilled, well-motivated, caring practitioners who provide highly valued, individual care with the highest professional standards in many private and public healthcare facilities. However, there are still those health professionals who are not good in terms of treating patients in good manner. Complains about health stuff members are reported every day, because patients are not happy with some health professionals and the shortage of health stuff members especially in public healthcare in the serious problem in South Africa since it results in poor health care delivery.  In an effort to address staff shortages, new categories of midlevel workers are being introduced by the DoH. These include clinical associates, emergency care technicians, and pharmacist assistants. The DoH has also established a task team between the Department of Education (“DoE”), DoH and the Department of Finance that is addressing the issue of production of health workers and funding of training.
Environmental health services are part of the health care services and assist in the prevention of diseases and spread of infections. Cleanliness is clearly of utmost importance in the health care environment. For example, the deaths of several babies in a hospital in KZN 2005 were attributed generally to poor cleanliness and a lack of appropriate hygienic procedures. The cleanliness of facilities visited in the course of the Provincial Reviews, both inside and out varied. There appears to be some correlation between cleanliness and staff attitudes and other indicators suggesting a link between well managed facilities and general quality and accessibility of care.


References
Barron P et al (2006). The District Health Barometer 2005/6. Durban: Health Systems Trust.
Benatar, S.R (1997). “Health Care Reform in the New South Africa” (1997) Vol 336 (12) The New England Journal of Medicine 891.
Beckman, G et al (2008). Health Systems and the Rights to Health: An Assessment of 194 Countries, Volume 372, 13 December 2008.