No comfort for dead baby’s parents
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klebsiella outbreak]. At the time, the department announced various intervention plans. Yet little seems to have changed . . . For many it is the only state care option available. It is essential that the level of care be the highest possible .”
A former patient, Saras Chetty, suffered two ordeals at the hospital in eight years.
In 2005, Chetty said, she was forced to carry her stillborn baby for a few weeks before she was allowed to deliver.
She claimed also that, in September last year, her 28-year-old brother Visvanathan was admitted in a critical condition but left unsupervised.
He was transferred to another Durban hospital, where he later died.
Chetty said she was disappointed by the hospital’s recent statistics, because she had hoped that her own dif- ficulties would have been enough to prompt changes at the institution.
“Maybe that is why they are building that mortuary so big, because it does not seem to be ending.”
The hospital’ s Mervin Reddy said the board and management welcomed the statistics, adding that this would aid the “fight to turn the hospital around”.
He said, however, that the fact that the hospital catered to more than just the Phoenix area had to be taken into account.
“There are many factors. Many people come from the informal settlements and tend not to get regular checkups, and this contributes to the problem.”
He said in these cases, late diagnoses of HIV and high blood pressure tended to play a role in maternal and foetal deaths.
The provincial department of health did not respond to queries.