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Sunday Times reports that an Eastern Cape nurse has described how she was held at gunpoint last week while parked outside a primary school where she was conducting a vaccination campaign. She and her colleague were robbed of their cellphones and hired vehicle.
Another nurse in Gqeberha said she and her colleagues had been victims of multiple armed robberies. “In May last year, about five men stormed the clinic and took our mobile phones and laptops. Three months later they came again, fired a shot inside the clinic and took our phones. This time I gave them the government-issued phone, but they demanded my own too. I told them I had left it at home, silently praying it wouldn’t ring,” she said. The incidents left staff traumatised and fearful for their lives. “We are scared to go to work because we don’t know if we will make it home alive,” lamented the nurse. The clinic has now been closed indefinitely, following escalating gang-related violence in the area. According to the health department, 420 health-care professionals were robbed, assaulted or asked to pay a protection fee between 2019 and November last year. The highest numbers were in the Western Cape, followed by the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. Ambulance crews have also become frequent victims of crime in recent years, sometimes requiring police escorts to respond to emergencies. Veli Sinqana of the Democratic Nursing Organisation of SA said crime was affecting service delivery, with nurses working in fear and some leaving clinics altogether because of security threats. Sinqana added that there was an urgent need to strengthen security and called for regular police patrols around clinics.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Yoliswa Sobuwa at Sunday Times (subscriber access only)
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