"The Friday ward round starts, like any other weekday round, at 7:30 and continues till 11:30. It involves a multidisciplinary team of specialists, therapists and nurses. The children are critically ill. We review each patient and plan management for the day. Our tools include mechanical devices and powerful drugs that support vital functions, and antibiotics. Our decisions have life-changing implications. The potential to do harm is enormous, the responsibility overwhelming. The buck stops with me.

After the round, team members implement the decisions, continuously monitoring changes in the patients’ conditions. Meanwhile new admissions arrive: children who have had major operations, critically ill children with medical conditions.

The afternoon round starts routinely at 4:30. On this Friday night it ended after 7 pm. I went home at 8:57 pm after updating my notes and discussing a child’s condition with her family, leaving two registrars to cover the night. Later, during the night I had 6 phone calls from the registrars to discuss patients." The latest issue of Critical Health Perspectives, produced by the People's Health Movement, examines the issue of the overtime contracts and salaries of health workers.

The South African Council of Churches has called for the formation of a Save Jobs Coalition, led by COSATU, in response to the impending closure of Rex Trueform’s Salt River plant. The closure of the plant will put another 1000 people out of work in the Western Cape, and bring the clothing, textile and leather industries closer to collapse. The decline of the clothing and textile industries undermines the prosperity and dignity not only of individual households, but also of entire communities.