28 Jul 2021

High ranking Botswana Nurses Union (BONU) officials  have painted a gloomy picture of the COVID-19 impact on health facilities.

  Addressing a media briefing in Gaborone on Tuesday, they detailed issues ranging from stressed staff to equipment shortages.

 BONU president Mr Obonolo Rahube said the current surge in COVID-19 infections had left nurses stressed and fatigued due to working long hours.

 He said there was a shortage of personnel in hospitals and clinics. 

   Mr Rahube said since the outbreak of COVID-19 in Botswana, over 800 nurses had contracted the virus, 34 had died, 23 of them due to COVID-19 related complications.

He asked government to consider hiring more health workers to reduce long working hours endured which were causing fatigue and psychological distress on personnel. 

The BONU leader called for proper deployment of occupational nurses as a COVID-19 pandemic addressing measure. 

He said many occupational nurses  were wrongly deployed and requested government to facilitate the relevant division.

According to Mr Rahube, another area needing special attention was the intensive care unit saying the small number of nurses working under it were already overwhelmed.

He suggested that in future resources should be invested in training more staff for the unit.

Noting that COVID-19 could only be defeated through fighting as communities, he urged the public to come on board to help nurses. 

For his part, BONU national publicity secretary Mr Aobakwe Lesolame said the aim of the media conference was to highlight resource challenges and other health issues that nurses continued to face in the fight against the pandemic. 

He said it was worrying that only 28 per cent of the nursing staff countrywide had been fully vaccinated. 

Mr Lesolame also expressed concern about shortage of personal protective equipment in health facilities especially masks, hand sanitisers and aprons. 

He requested government to collaborate with the private sector on vaccine procurement.

Mr Lesolame called for the introduction of risk allowance for nursing staff. Ends