Doctors at Steve Biko Academic Hospital say they feel helpless and hopeless to help the scores of patients arriving at the facility daily. Faced with gravely ill patients, a lack of personal protective equipment, overcrowding, increased pressure and poor working conditions, the doctors who spoke to Daily Maverick on condition of anonymity said more and more patients were dying on their watch. Nurses stand at the entrance of the emergency unit at Steve Biko Academic Hospital where they conduct Covid screening on everyone who enters. (Photo: Shiraaz Mohamed) “I don’t feel like I am being protected by our hospital right now. I am running around like a chicken without a head. I feel very hopeless. I feel like I should not care anymore. Caring is actually just hurting me and the patients because instead of me doing what I said I was going to do when I left medicine, I am treating these people like numbers. Someone dies and you have to shrug your shoulders and move on to the next. There is not even a minute to mourn a person or to figure out what went wrong. I feel completely hopeless,” said Dr Monica (not her real name).