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The failure by the Northern Cape Department of Health to renew the contracts of a number of Community Health Care Workers (CHWs) employed in the province has raised concerns about how CHWs are treated, as well as about further capacity constraints on the health system, at a time when all hands are needed on deck.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has received complaints from CHWs in De Aar and Calvinia, whose contracts expired at the end of June this year and have still not been extended. This is apparently despite promises made by the provincial Department of Health that they would be renewed.

The already stretched health system will be a lot poorer without the extra set of hands provided by CHWs.

CHWs play an important role in taking health care to the people and performing various activities such as screening, palliative care, wound care, registration of pregnancies, checking immunisation status of babies and also assisting with tracking and tracing of patients and adherence to medication – especially TB medicine. In this time of Covid-19, they have also taken on screening and other pandemic-related duties.

This is not the first time that the poor management of CHWs has caused havoc in the lives of dedicated care workers, who are the foot soldiers of the health system. It is yet another indictment of the lack of foresight and planning that continues to get in the way of the delivery of health services.

The DA is liaising with the health department to seek answers and get a way forward in terms of the overdue extensions. More must be done to treat CHWs with dignity, to provide them with increased stability and to ensure sustainability in terms of the health services that they provide to communities.

Issued by The DA