Govt hospital ‘body snatchers’

A traumatised family tell how a state patient in Kimberley was dead for a month and her body moved between several locations before they were even informed that she had died. They claim hospital staff kept on turning them away.

Relatives after a month learned of death while being turned away from health facility for weeks.

Astate patient in Kimberley was dead for a month and her body moved between several locations before her family was even informed that she had died.

This according to the distraught family of the late Maria Masinga, who was admitted to Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe Hospital

in the Northern Cape with severe complications from Tuberculosis (TB). Her sister Johanna only found out in the last week that her sister died at the facility after weeks of being turned away from the hospital, with staff allegedly refusing to update her on her sister’s condition.

“We don’t have such a patient here,” Johanna and her boss were told repeatedly, as they contacted several wards at Robert Sobukwe and another facility, Harmony Home, in search of Masinga.

A nurse at Robert Sobukwe eventually confirmed that the patient had died on 17 June. They later discovered that she had, in fact, died on 18 June, a day after Masinga’s son went begging to find out about his mother at the hospital.

Having fallen ill in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, Masinga was last seen by her family on 16 June, when she was rushed to the hospital.

“She had TB. She was so weak, when the ambulance came they put her on a water drip,” Johanna said. “They said she lost a lot of water because she was vomiting. On the 18th she passed on. We didn’t know. But her child was there on the 17th and they sent him away. They said they would call him. He left two contact numbers – his and mine.”

Johanna said her and her family were most traumatised by how the mother of seven most likely died cold, scared and alone – and, for a month, they were not aware.

Questions sent to the department had yet to be answered at the time of going to press.

Two weeks before Masinga was to be admitted to the hospital, according to the Diamond Fields Advertiser, a group of staff members, including nurses at Robert Sobukwe, staged a protest by refusing to enter the building. This was because a doctor, whom they all claimed to have had contact with, had tested positive for Covid-19.

The nurses wanted management to allow them all to be tested first before continuing to work.

According to health workers union Nehawu provincial secretary Steffen Collins, the staffing situation at the hospital was dire and it had been for years. He said it was quite plausible that a body would go missing, because of a severe shortage of support staff.

“That family has every right to be aggrieved because there is understaffing and no undertaking has been made to rectify this in years. They are now filling some posts. The department has recently made 289 appointments but we are still in need of support staff especially,” said Collins.

“We have recently learned there is a moratorium of the filling of vacancies and for now we don’t know why. We have tried to engage with the premier. We have written letters requesting an audience, but to no avail.”

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