Patients say Dutywa health centre fails to deliver

Patients visiting Dutywa Health Care Centre say they suffer waiting in long queues, and being maltreated by “lazy and rude nurses” who shout at them.

They said that every day, dozens of patients return home without getting their medication, after spending the whole day in the line.

The Dispatch visited the clinic on Tuesday. Nurses were working at a very slow pace in attending to the patients.

As our team entered the building, scores of patients, mostly older people, were still waiting to register.

The queue was so long that some patients had to stand.

The queue to the consultation room was also very long.

Close to 100 patients queued at the dispensary after being turned away the previous day when the dispensary mysteriously closed for the day.

In the long line for meds was 74-year-old granny Nomatu Vonya.

She had arrived at 6am with the hope of being in front of the queue. “I arrived here yesterday at 6am, but I went home without my medication. I am here again today, but it’s 11am already and I am still queuing,” she said.

She said the previous day, people were just told to go home.

“Someone I thought was the manager came and just told us to leave, saying they were done and were closing for the day,” she said.

Patients told the Dispatch of how they were humiliated and shouted at while spending long hours at the facility.

The Dispatch reporter witnessed a nurse shouting at an elderly man for asking a question the reporter had not heard. “Hamba uyohlala pha phantsi. Andizuva ngawe uba mandithini” (Go and sit down. You are not going to tell me what to do!)

The department of health spokesperson Lwandile Sicwetsha said the long queues were caused by people who bypassed their local clinics and went directly to the healthcare centre.

“The staff complement is designed in a way that the centre should have patients coming through referrals from local clinics.

“This (bypassing) creates a situation where you have more people than the expected number who must now be attended at the healthcare centre.”

But Nonambala Ntsini, 80, of Esinqumeni rubbished Sicwetsha’s comment as baseless lies.

“I arrived here at 5am and left at 5pm on Monday. I hired a car to bring me here and went back without my medication. Today [Tuesday] I hired a car again.

“On top of that we have to deal with nurses who are lazy and rude.” She said the situation at the centre was getting worse by the day.

“We are suffering, things are just bad, we have been complaining. Nothing has changed. Those at the dispensary are the worst. They shout at us as if we are their children.

“They are very rude. You dare not question them on what is taking so long to dispense the medication, the next thing they threaten not to give you the medication.

“The manager is also rude, like all these other nurses here,” she said.