Cruel and careless treatment from staff

Last month, an investigation was launched into the behaviour of a specialist doctor at Cecilia Makiwane Hospital in Mdantsane, who was accused of shouting and shoving a patient in the women ’ s health clinic. The incident took place the same day the patient died.

Khayelitsha mother Nobuntu Fuzane approached parliament earlier this year to seek justice for her daughter who she said had been beaten during a hospital stay last year. Tamara, 31, was severely ill with an incurable disease.

In 2012, Anthony van Loggerenberg, 64, had suffered a stroke and had bleeding on the brain. Nurses at East London’s Frere Hospital called to attend to him left him lying in his own faeces because it was not time for a change. They are alleged to have torn his nose while applying a feeding tube.

In 2012 Nosibulelo Dwenga lost her baby at Mthatha General Hospital. When she was admitted to the hospital, she was forced to share a bed with another patient. On her second day in hospital, she thought she was going into labour. A nurse took a peek and belted out [singer] Zahara’s song Loliwe. Two other nurses were watching Generations on TV. Her baby later died.

In June 2006, a King William’s Town woman was admitted to Bhisho Hospital to deliver her first baby. The baby was not positioned correctly for normal birth and nurses were supposed to have performed an emergency Caesarean section. But they failed to do so. As a result the birth was unnecessarily prolonged. The woman was later awarded R16-million in compensation.