When an Nkandla chicken air conditioner gets elevated above patient life

I am aware of our limitations at a curative level across the profession. A basic in community medicine lecture I skipped in medical school. Futile and frustrating as it is, it is even worse when individual patients outcomes are affected by resources limitated casualty beyond any imaginable scale.

It is with that in mind that I am going to discuss  my daily run as a doctor in one of the district hospitals in KZN. Not a run in Nkandla chicken enclosure by any means. The latter is air conditioned and secured electronically and by police for a start which is way ahead of our non functional fans in casualty and constant threats by murderers who find finishing off a job is a lot easier at a hospital.

Our casualty call for the weekend started on Friday night on background of no Xray service due to challenges in the department . Challenges I have to mentioned may have been solved at a average cost of about 10 000 rands or less.

The casualty call entails receiving patients off the the street as the ambulance drops them and passing on those we can't handle to the next tier hospital. A gunshot chest patient therefore becomes an immediate problem. This weekend though has been a lot more traumatic as we lost a patient because our referral hospital is just as under resourced.  We have had no x ray facility for the past four days. The tray that rolls the x rays out is not working