The Botswana Nurses Union (BONU) is pleading for help and support during these Covid trying times.
The request, publicised in a press conference last week, came riding a horse of grimness and fright, when BONU was giving an overview of the Covid-19 situation in Botswana in relation to nursing and front-line workers.
BONU public relations officer, Aobakwe Lesolame, said they gathered as nurses of Botswana to not only express their woes, as the figures speak for themselves and the situation is heart wrecking.
Prior to the conference, Lesolame said they’d made suggestions to the Ministry of Health and Wellness (MOHW), but nothing seems to have changed.
From January 2020, when the disease was spoken of in other countries and had not reached Botswana, BONU spoke with the director of national health services at the time to prepare the sector for the pandemic, and they appeared to reciprocate the union’s concerns.
“When the first cases of the virus were recorded, we reached the ministry of health because it appeared that there was lack of preparation yet they indicated that they were doing everything they can to control the situation,” Lesolame said.
He added that as health practitioners, knowing first-hand of Botswana’s inadequate medical facilities, they continued engaging the MOHW to assist in preparation against the pandemic.
“From our eyes and those of our union members surpassing 8000 across the country, we received reports and realisations that the country is not prepared,” said Lesolame.
BONU’s going back and forth with the MOHW, ultimately led to them taking the government to court. This was to compel the state to provide nurses with the safety equipment they needed. “We lost the case because it is not mandatory under the law that we be provided with what we requested from government,” the PRO said.
In one meeting the union said they’d met with former PS Solomon Sekwakwa and, “we showed that countries under attack at the time like Italy and Spain were experiencing shortages of health care facilities. They were converting some of their buildings to try and accommodate the rising figures wrought by Covid-19,” Lesolame continued.
He said they also told them that such countries were also experiencing oxygen shortfalls, and were resorting to locally producing the life saving gas.
BONU had vouched for a similar capacitation of the health sector, and the government gave the impression that they agreed with the union yet they turned their coats. “We were expecting that some of the hospitals at the time would now, since countries were well informed on how infectious the virus was, have been converted to a point where they could help our patients.”
Reports from the union’s structures show that more than 800 nurses have tested positive to the virus out of the 10 000 nurses in the country.
“From March 2020 we’ve had 34 deaths of nurses. Out of that number 23 nurses succumbed because of Covid 19 related issues.
The president of BONU Obonolo Rahube, said as a union they are far from reaching herd immunity. “In terms of herd immunity, we are far from achieving this because only 28 percent of our nurses have been fully vaccinated. For there to be herd immunity, vaccination should be at 70 percent,” Rahube said.
In terms of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Rahube said they have instances where nurses are reusing gowns due to a lack of the protective garment.
The union’s president added that the government’s preparation regarding the number of people who are trained is low. “Country standards in other nations is that there should be one nurse per ICU patient. But both private and public hospitals are full. Amid all this, you have the deputy PS writing to halt the admission of patients at private facilities. You start wondering where is our country going?” he rhetorically asked.
Rahube called for BOMRA to get out of the cocoon and fast track clinical trials for Ivermectin use in the country.
