PE hospital to probe death of patient after fall

LIVINGSTONE Hospital management has started its own investigation into the death of a patient who fell from its fifth floor on Christmas Eve.

It was said Zanaxolo Mbeki, 29, died after falling from a ward window on the fifth floor.

The Port Elizabeth hospital’s senior manager for clinical services, Dr Mojalefa Maseloa, said they were looking into the fall as the size of the man and the small window he was alleged to have fallen out of did not make sense.

“We need to see the postmortem report and we believe that this will provide us with some answers,” he said. “Nobody saw him jump or fall.”

He said the hospital disputed an allegation by the family that Mbeki was not properly identified and hidden in the hospital morgue.

“Mbeki did not die immediately of his injuries. He was resuscitated in the hospital’s casualty unit.

“We should have left his body in the casualty unit for the police but we thought it would have been inhumane.

“Out of concern for his human dignity we moved him to the morgue because we did not know when the police would get here.

“He had a patient tag around his arm,” Maseloa said.

The CEO for Livingstone Hospital, Thulane Madonsela, said they were investigating everything that happened from the time Mbeki was first hospitalised at the facility.

Mbeki’s uncle, Port Elizabeth businessman Weza Moss, said the death had left his family – including his prominent brother, Save South Africa leader Nceba Moss, and businessman brother-inlaw Sipho Pityana – with many questions about Mbeki’s death.