N West vaccination well underway

North West Premier Job Mokgoro says the vaccination of close to 42 000 frontline health care workers in the province is well underway.

Mokgoro said the province received its first batch of 3 900 doses of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines.

Addressing the Hybrid Sitting of the North West Provincial Legislature on Thursday, Mokgoro said the province will be receiving vaccination doses incrementally every two weeks.

“We will announce the details surrounding the second phase of the vaccination roll out in due course,” Mokgoro said.

Mokgoro said the province has managed to put in place 995 COVID-19 related beds across the province in both public and private sector health facilities and have also established quarantine sites by making use of state-owned, mining and private facilities.

“We have increased community access to Primary Health Care services by increasing operating hours at health facilities and embarking on infrastructure improvements to four provincial hospitals and 14 primary health care facilities,” Premier Mokgoro said.

Mokgoro said the province has installed new boilers at the Klerksdorp-Tshepong, Mahikeng Provincial, Gelukspan and Schweizer-Reneke Hospitals.

“We have increased access to life saving procedures and operations at the five largest hospitals in the North West,” Mokgoro said.

He said the province has decreased the vacancy rate at the Department of Health from 20% to 14,8% by the end of January 2021.

“Accruals are still a problem, but the Department of Health has managed to process 88% of all accruals to date, and we believe that we can do better going forward,” he said.

Mokgoro said the North West government will be opening the Sekhing and Jouberton Community Health Centres in August this year to render comprehensive health care services to the Ga- Mothibi and Jouberton communities.

“We are providing back-up supply of water and electricity at health facilities that have water shortage due to drought and regular electricity interruptions.

“We will rollout pre-exposure prophylaxis and promotion to two institutions of higher learning in the province, for the prevention of HIV infections to reduce the burden of the disease in the province, and improve life expectancy,” Mokgoro said.

Mokgoro commended the province’s health professionals who put their lives on the line in order to save others.

He also thanked President Cyril Ramaphosa who remained steadfast in his resolute and firm stewardship of the country’s risk adjusted strategy since March 2020.

“As shaken as we are as a nation, we take comfort in the knowledge that we have a President who genuinely cares about his country and people, and has shown this through myriad of difficult but necessary decisions he has guided cabinet to take over the last eleven months,” Mokgoro said.