- Note - This was first posted on 2-26-8 but is worth
rereading. If true, it reveals a startling truth about the
former aparetheid government and how the current ANC government
has turned its back on medical care for ALL
Africans.
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-
- I'm a northern European medical doctor, a senior
surgeon, working in the public sector of South Africa. I have done so
the last 5 years. I do not want to speak outside my discipline, so
this will be about the medical demise of SA. Most visitors to South
Africa, who encounter the public health sector, do so by visiting a
hospital or a clinic in or near the big cities. What they get to see
is a hospital or a clinic, which is working, but not up to Western
standards.
-
- Before I came down here, I believed that pre-94
South Africa had a very good health care system for the white
population, and nothing for the black. I soon discovered that was not
the case. The Calvinistic white rulers of South Africa had built an
elaborate network of public hospitals, reaching the outermost
societies of this large country. We are talking about 5-600 beds
hospitals far out in the rural areas.
-
- Before 1994, they were well manned and equipped, and
complicated procedures were carried out there. I know this. I've been
to these hospitals and spoken to the people working there. I have gone
through old patient files and surgical statistics. These were
hospitals that catered for the black population.
-
- This web of hospitals as I can see must have covered
more or less 100% of South Africa's population, including the former
Bantustans or homelands. I know that the same situation was present as
to schools. The ANC ran a couple of campaigns like "Election before
education" and "To make the country ungovernable". As part of that,
most rural schools were burnt down.
-
- Keeping in mind the traditionally very violent
African culture down here, one perfectly understands why the hospitals
built by the apartheid government, did not suffer the same fate. This
has left us with a window to the past; we can clearly see that the
apartheid government did not only care for their white population, but
in fact, also took great responsibility for the black, at something
that must have been an enormous cost.
-
- Back to visiting South African hospitals When doing
so, the visitor will be shown one of a few hospitals, where not too
many windows are broken, not all the equipment has been vandalized and
not all the electric supply has been cut off. Now, go outside these
hospitals, go to the former rural hospitals, and what do you find? You
will find that the hospitals built for the black population, by the
black ANC government, have been degraded and left unfunded. You will
find hospitals with no doctors. Hospitals with no electricity. No
X-ray equipment. No furniture. You actually will find old rural
hospitals inhabited by squatters!
-
- It is for me a huge paradox that the black
government seems to have zero compassion for their own population, as
long as they can get away with it and no one can or will see it. The
black population has not by magic become so much healthier after 1994
that these hospitals are not needed anymore. Au contraire, the black
population is in dire need of these hospitals, but all they find are
ghost hospitals. Many of which I've visited, are beyond repair.
-
- I am leaving South Africa now. I have paid my
duties, and I am forever marked by Africa in the form of an entry and
exit 9 mm bullet hole in my right upper leg. I got it because my
robber was not happy with me handing over my 10 year old or something
Nokia 6110 cellphone, and some small coins.
-
- No wallet, no rings and only amalgam fillings Now,
what kind of doctor is that? My last word to South Africa: Go to
hell!
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