Mossel Bay hospital ‘turns woman away’
A woman complained to the Mossel Bay Advertiser that her mother had been turned away from the Provincial Hospital in town and was not given water for kidney dialysis.
Sive Tom explained that her mother, Nosiphiwa, has a pipe in her stomach and is able to do dialysis at home.
Sive lives with Nosiphiwa in Highway Park. Sive says that it was in March last year that Nosiphiwa was turned away by the Provincial Hospital in Mossel Bay.
"Her kidneys failed," Sive said. "She was told there was nothing else the hospital could do for her and that it was too late to get a donor for her because it was a long process. They wrote her off their records," Sive said. "The same thing happened when she went to the hospital in George."
As a result Nosiphiwa went to visit her sister in Limpopo, where she was able to obtain dialysis water immediately. However, she came back from Limpopo in October last year because she could no longer live with her sister there.
Since then she has been going to Limpopo every month to have a check-up and to obtain dialysis water.
The Mossel Bay Advertiser contacted Health Department spokesperson Nadia Ferreira, who said on Monday, 29 October: "The renal replacement programmes, which includes dialysis, and their criteria differ between provinces.
"Mossel Bay Hospital is aware of the client’s recent request to be transferred to that hospital for treatment and communicated to the patient that she must first be evaluated by the team at George Hospital before access to the programme is granted.
"An appointment was made for her to be evaluated next week." Ferreira is the principal communications officer: Garden