ESWATINI: Nurses take to the streets over food and drug shortages

By: Ollus Ndomu

Several hundreds of nurses in Eswatini’s capital, Mbabane, have taken to the streets over the prevailing food and drug shortages, local and regional media have reported.

A tweet by the local Eswatini Observer, said Mbabane national hospital nurses and other healthcare workers protested the shortage of drugs and food including poor working conditions at the country’s biggest health facility.

Mayibongwe Masangane, Secretary General of the Swaziland Democratic Nurses Union -Swadnu- was quoted by Swaziland News saying a good number of patients had died of starvation and lack of drugs in hospitals:

“It’s true, the shortage of food in hospitals has resulted in many deaths. Some survived because their families managed to provide them with food because even if that medication could be available for that patient on that particular day, you find that it won’t work in an empty stomach.”

The prevailing shortages of drugs and food whose cause remains a mystery, come at the height of the mounting calls for democratic reforms which sparked widespread pro-democracy protests across the small impoverished absolute monarchy country.