The poor treatment of healthcare workers compromises the quality of health care and, in turn, results in the system being ill-prepared for Covid-19, Oxfam South Africa says.
"The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has put into sharp focus, and exacerbated, a number of inequalities and fragilities that haunt the healthcare system and constrain it from delivering on its mandate in terms of the South African Constitution and regional and international human rights law in terms of the right to health," an Oxfam SA report on health inequality reads.
According to the report, the South African healthcare system hangs on the edge of a cliff because a "a profit-seeking private healthcare sector, combined with underinvestment in an unaccountable public healthcare sector and gaps in labour policy, has driven unfair practices in the South African healthcare sector".
It further found that, in the public sector, one nurse served 200 patients and one community health worker served 101 households, while 70% of the country’s doctors were in the private sector, creating an unequal and elitist healthcare system.
After highlighting gaps in policy and implementation which led to the right to decent and dignified work for nurses and community health workers being compromised, the report made several recommendations:
"If implemented, these recommendations stand to address the key barriers to decent work that female healthcare workers face.
