Failed by our Country's Public Health Care - South Africa

So today I am angry. I am disappointed. Disappointed in the system we call Public Health Care in South Africa. It does not really exist.

I am disappointed in a government which allowed for sadness and sorrow not only in my direct family but in a person we see as family and this person’s family’s life.

My parents’ domestic helper has been a very good person. She is still young. She joined our family when I still lived at home. She became family! Not only in my parents’ life but also my brother and his family’s life. Yet, the government Health Care couldn’t care less.

I am writing in anger. I am writing with emotions which I should probably not do. I need to get this off my chest.

This person has a name. She is not just a number even though she is going to become part of a statistic now. Her name, Sarah.

Sarah went for aggressive cancer treatment including Chemo and Radiation. It is painful and hard to go through this. The radiation they gave her was so aggressive that it burnt her insides and caused lesions. This TOO is painful.

After all this she was given the clear and said she was “cancer free”. Little did they know that she wasn’t. My question remained if she is clean, why is she still having pain?

She went for more tests and needless to say, she still has cancer - after waiting more than a month to get the results. In this month so much could have been done. Even when they said she is “free of cancer”.

She was diagnosed this week with stage 4 cancer in the spine. Cancer went from her lady parts “got cured” and then suddenly spinal cancer? More like the cancer never left (and no, not because we all have cancer cells cause I know that!) but because they don’t care to follow through and follow up.

The mother, this wife, this daughter now has to struggle with this. Life has changed for her. The thing that also upsets me is that I can ask a million times if I can do something yet I know the thing she wants is to be cured. THAT unfortunately I cannot help with.

I am angry with the Health Care system. I am angry with the government in this regard. They should have picked up that she was not clean. She was NOT clean!!!!

When will this place care for the people. When will South Africa, the government, the health care department own up? When will they be accountable. When will we not be wanting to second guess everything hey say?? There are so many people suffering and so many families are affected. It is just wrong.

I had to get this off my chest. It takes a lot to write something person for myself on here and it took someone’s life for me to open up about my worries and fears and disappointments and me being angry towards this place everyone likes to call home. South Africa = Home? I don’t think so. South Africa is not a country that cares for the people they claim they care about???