‘MY BROTHER DIED IN MY ARMS AS CLINIC KEPT US OUT’
Guards, nurses ignored seriously ill Mpho, 6, say his distraught family
ABROKEN family has told of how their six-year-old boy died in his distraught brother’s arms after security guards at the gates to Empilweni Health Centre denied the child access to the emergency room on Tuesday.
A nurse was also accused of turning her back on the desperate boy, saying: “I am busy with another patient”.
The Buffalo Flats family wants to take legal action against the Gompo, Buffalo City, health centre and its guards.
Mpho Roberts died as his family was making desperate pleas for help for the little boy at the clinic’s doors.
This was after security guards told them to stand in the queue and wait for their turn along with 20 patients in the line.
The Dispatch visited the griefstricken family in their house, less than a kilometre away from the clinic. The room was sombre except for the muted sounds of playing children.
Mpho’s mother, Marilyn, 46, speaking with her family around her, said Mpho fell violently ill on Monday night with severe diarrhoea and vomiting.
Marilyn, a private care worker, was at work.
“When I left for work he told me he loved me and that he’d see me later.
“I didn’t think it would be the last time I saw him.”
Mpho’s elder brother Romeo, 20, was tasked with rushing him to Empilweni.
She said when Romeo arrived at the clinic at around 8am, security guards at the gate refused to let them pass to the emergency room.
They insisted that they go and sit down in the queue and wait to be helped.
They said Romeo begged the guards to allow them to rush the visibly weakening boy to be helped, but to no avail.
Mpho’s aunt Jeanie said Romeo ran back home with the little boy on his back to tell them that the clinic wouldn’t help them.
Jeanie and Romeo rushed back together, and yet again struggled to gain access to the emergency room.
Jeanie said she and Romeo had called out to a nurse who was walking past: “Please help!”
“She said ‘I am busy with another patient’ and carried on walking.”
Jeanie said the boy grew weaker and began to convulse while still in his brother’s arms while they were still begging for help.
“When nurses eventually attended to our cries, they just tapped him for his pulse and just said he was dead,” she said.
“Mpho was still alive when we took him to the clinic.
“He would have had a fighting chance if doctors and nurses could have at least helped us, but they simply disregarded our cries until he died.”
Marilyn, wiping tears away, said her last-born son deserved to die in a “more dignified manner”.
“I would understand if he had died on a hospital bed after being attended to doctors and nurses.
“But not like this,” she said and broke down weeping.
Marilyn said Mpho had been a bubbly child who enjoyed playing and dancing.
“I’m not saying it wasn’t my son’s time to die, but how he died has left me with so much pain,” she said.
“I believe my son’s spirit will only rest in peace once that clinic takes responsibility for their actions and changes its ways and starts treating patients with the care and dignity they deserve.”
The Dispatch has previously reported a number of times on allegations of the clinic’s negligent treatment of and attitude towards its patients.
● In March, three patients accused the clinic of lack of compassion after they sat unattended for hours after being told that the doctor on duty had gone home to prepare supper for her family; and
● Last May, a patient narrated how she sat in pain for hours while nurses were unseen on the premises.
Provincial health spokesman Sizwe Kupelo said: “Condolences to the family. The department will have to gather more facts before commenting”.