Once the vuvuzelas have been packed away, will there be any real change?

By Stephen Richards

It would appear to be an unusual time to emigrate. The World Cup appears to have been an overwhelming success, the country united, things running relatively smoothly and even prominent corrupt officials are surprisingly being found guilty. An email from a friend painted the picture of a revamped, utopian Durban beachfront. Cape Town as a backdrop is a pleasing site to the eye especially on Australian television. And even the stream-of-conscious thought from the youth league has taken second place to the World Cup (thankfully).

To add to all this, Australia can give one the feeling of being regulated, as my wife found out after being forced to buy our toddlers’ library book that had a slight water mark on the corner of a page. And the continual patriotic rah rah can be rather tiring after living with it for a few months. It’s not uncommon to see a flagpole erected in the average garden — independent of sporting event. Perhaps the six-month mark is also the most difficult in terms of friends and family. I have read that somewhere. And the news is just not the same — full of repeated non-issues such as what to do with the couple of refugees on Christmas Island. Granted Julia Gillard coming into power was a relatively bigger issue but even that lacked many of the qualities such as mismanagement and corruption that surround similar news events in Southern Africa.

But then it’s probably not that much fun in the casualty department in which I worked. Alcohol, public holidays and sporting events tend to have a sort of direct relationship with trauma. The department will be short-staffed, equipment supplies low. The risk of a needle-stick injury is just that much higher. And the potential frustration also just that much more, as increased patients means increased poor management due to lack of resources and personnel. Needle-stick injuries and poor management beyond one’s control also tend to cause considerable angst, and both those tend to last longer than the duration of a World Cup!

An Australian medical senior supervisor was curious about the retention rate of South African doctors. Of all the international doctors in his department, he found that the South Africans were the least likely to return home. That probably holds true for the current situation in which all 11 South African doctors in the department appear to have no intention of leaving Australia. The staffing issue in South Africa is perhaps one reason for this. The department I work in has approximately 26 doctors on shift per 24 hours, in a department seeing about 60 000 patients a year. My previous hospital in South Africa had 4 doctors on shift per 24 hours, for an emergency department seeing about 30 000 patients a year. But perhaps it is not the figures that are the most important. Besides, history is full of heroic stories of feats accomplished with seemingly impossible odds, with limited resources and manpower. Unfortunately, a medical management/system that appears to oppose and neglect doctors instead of working with them, has not created the necessary platform for near-impossible feats to occur.

The stadiums look spectacular, the vibe sounds contagious, and even Zapiro’s English journalists are eating their words. Yet as the excitement dies down and the vuvuzelas are packed away, will there be any real change? The link between the soccer World Cup and a lasting health legacy may be a tenuous one. But a desperate situation could use any sort of tenuous link available. Perhaps the World Cup will be seen as more than a privilege, vote of confidence and success. Perhaps it may be used as a defining moment — a moment from which to move forward and to put in place the necessary steps to rehabilitate a country with a health system that is arguably failing. Or perhaps I am just being naive, and a return to reality the inevitable.

Stephen Richards is a medical doctor who recently moved to Australia.