Hospital horrors: junior doctor performs brain op
Patients dying because of corruption, mismanagement and lack of basic resources, doctors say
JUNIOR doctors are performing brain surgery on patients in Limpopo state hospitals as a healthcare crisis spirals further out of control.
This week, doctors told how newborn babies had to share incubators and mothers were left to nurse their newborn infants on the floor because of a shortage of beds.
Some babies were born with cerebral palsy because there was no paper for heart-rate monitors, so doctors did not realise the unborn baby was in distress.
Several patients had died waiting for surgery or for beds to become vacant, they said.
One patient told how she had been tied to a bed before undergoing a procedure with no anaesthetic.
Another told of nurses refusing to bring him a bedpan for three hours because they were having a party.
Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi described the situation as “madness” and said rebuilding the state health sector in the province would be a long process.
‘‘Now it’s all about correcting the damage that was done. We don’t want to go back and clean up the damage, we want to do it correctly from the beginning,” he said.
I still have nightmares about that place. I would never send anyone to that hospital — Bianca Loots, below
AT 27, Bianca Loots’s life was falling into place. She was pregnant with twins and planning her wedding.
But in January she suffered a miscarriage.
Unable to afford the R15 000 that a dilation and curettage procedure costs in a private hospital, Loots was admitted at Pietersburg Hospital — Limpopo’s biggest state hospital.
‘‘I was told by a nurse it would be a 10-minute procedure under anaesthetic.”
The horror began when Loots was stripped and tied to the bed.
‘‘They didn’t give me any drugs. During the procedure I screamed in pain and begged them to stop, but they ignored me. Afterwards they gave me a sanitary pad for the bleeding,” she said.
Loots lay in her hospital bed for four days with no food or water, before discharging herself without ever having seen a doctor.
‘‘I still have nightmares about that place,” she said. “I would never send anyone to that hospital.”
Loots’s horror story is one of many emerging from Limpopo’s state hospitals, where the shortage of specialists is so severe that junior doctors are performing neurosurgery.
A doctor at Pietersburg Hospital — who completed community service just three months ago — said: ‘‘What am I supposed to do? Let people die? We have a consultant neurosurgeon, but when there’s an emergency head trauma and he’s not here, I have to go into theatre. I try my best. I know how to perform the basic procedures but I’m not a surgeon and sometimes people die.”
There are eight doctors employed by the hospital and one contracted specialist, a neurosurgeon, who works from 8am to 11am on weekdays.
Doctors from several hospitals in the province told the Sunday Times babies were sharing incubators and mothers nursing their infants on the floor due to a shortage of beds.
“Sometimes babies are born with cerebral palsy because there was no paper for the heart rate monitor, so doctors did not pick up that the foetus was in distress,” said one doctor.
Doctors said scores of patients were dying from treatable injuries, and they were being forced to lie to families to stem the growing tide of lawsuits against the province, the value of which stands at R3.7-billion.
Corruption, historical debt and under-budgeting are some of the reasons cited for the dire situation.
Former health MEC Norman Mabasa said that while he was in charge between 2012 and 2013, corruption had been rife.
“At one hospital in Thabazimbi, the airconditioners repeatedly broke down in 2012. An investigation revealed that staff were being asked to break them as soon as the repair company left so the company could get more work,” he said.
‘‘There is mismanagement of hospitals and medicine supply depots. The department needs to be able to get rid of people who don’t do their jobs.”
A doctor at Pietersburg Hospital said he and his colleagues were forced to play God and make life or death decisions due to a lack of specialists, ventilators, heart rate monitors, incubators, theatres, CT scanners, ECG machines and other crucial basic equipment.
A doctor at Letaba Hospital near Tzaneen said the hospital’s generator had failed during a power outage two years ago.
“We had patients on ventilators and we could only save so few because you need two hands to ventilate manually and we found ourselves choosing who to save. There are days when I regret becoming a doctor even though it was my dream.”
A doctor at Mokopane Hospital outside Polokwane said two months ago a 20-year-old patient with a brain tumour had been sent to Pietersburg Hospital for a potentially life-saving operation.
“He died. He was waiting for the operation and because there was only one operating theatre he died. Maybe he could have been saved. I don’t know — we never gave him a chance.”
At WF Knobel Hospital, a doctor who works with cancer patients said: “I’ve seen patients wait month after month to be seen by a specialist. I’ve seen people decay. I’ve seen cancer consume them alive. This is a serious injustice to our people.”
South African Medical Association provincial chairman Seshoka Muila, who works at Pietersburg Hospital, said: ‘‘These challenges did not start today or yesterday. The department must take responsibility and provide us with the basic life-saving tools and a better working environment for the sake of our people.”