Making a Difference

21 Minister of Health and Social Services

MinisterofHealthand SocialServices Iwas transferred to the Ministry of Health and Social Services in September 1996 after six years of hard work in Regional and Local Government and Housing. This Ministry was not a new one; it had existedsincecolonialtimesbuthadmanyproblemsandlotsofunfinished legislation to be rectified. When the outgoing Minister handed to me over twelve files containing unfinished work, I was not impressed at all. I felt I had to start from scratch doing the things he was supposed to have done during the time he had been in office. I felt he was going to rest in my former Ministry, as he had been transferred there and I didn’t hand over a single unfinished piece of legislation to him. During my first week, I learned that patients were waiting a long time to be served in the clinics, because the nurses were having morning prayers at work, which meant that the patients were attended to only from 10am. I went to one clinic and found that this story was true; the nurses were busy praying fervently while the sick people were waiting to be treated. I called a meeting and told them to stop those church services in the clinics during working hours, with immediate effect. They must wake up early, finish their prayers at homes, and come to work by 7.30am. That is what they were paid to do. I also told them that prayers are a private matter and can’t be imposed on others. The nurses accused me of heathenism. I told those who accused me that, heathen or not, the work that put bread on their tables had priority. I told them they were hypocrites. I remember a preacher called me and wanted an explanation about what I meant by calling Christians hypocrites. So I explained why. When doctors take the Hippocratic Oath and nurses take their Oath of Service, we state that our priority is the health of our patients, and if we let them sit around and wait for their medication all morning, we are not adhering to that oath. The preacher understood. Making a Difference 170 Of course, he was quoting me out of context; putting words in other people’s mouths in order to justify attacking them is a well-known trick. Before I found my bearings in the new office, some nurses started protesting about overtime for which they were allegedly not paid for the past few years. They went on an illegal strike. What shocked me was the involvement of my own niece who was in the forefront of the demonstration. Well, it was her democratic right. I, in turn, reminded them that they were essential service workers and shouldn’t go on an illegal strike, and if any patients died as a result of their strike, they would be held responsible for the loss of life. I also said I would be looking into their grievances when I settled down, but for now, they must go back to work. They did go back to work. I was conscious that they were challenging me as a woman and testing my tenacity, but I wasn’t going to be harassed by people who seemed to have forgotten the oath they took. Why had they not taken up this issue with the outgoing Minister who had been there for six years? Kunene Region I started familiarization trips round the country and discovered a total lack of health facilities in the constituencies of Kaokoland in north-west Namibia. There was a very dilapidated hospital in Opuwo: the roof was falling off and patients were waiting the whole day to be treated. There was a burned-out clinic in Okanguati, apparently destroyed by a gas cylinder inside the building that had exploded. I was surprised that such a gas cylinder could be there. Before I got to Okanguati, I visited a health post, a rotting prefabricated one, in Ohandungu village, halfway to Okanguati. This was all. It meant that people had no health facilities in the whole of Kaokoland except for the three facilities I’ve mentioned. There were no health facilities for 200 kilometres and no roads to get to the one hospital. Patients in Kaokoland were at the mercy of their traditional healers, because with no roads it wasn’t worth trying to get to the hospital. Thus the Kunene Region was totally neglected, particularly Kaokoland. Public health services like immunization and health education were non-existent. I decided I would start there...