New mother’s Joburg hospital nightmare

More cracks are beginning to show in Gauteng’s public health system as climbing Covid-19 cases continue filling up beds and waiting areas in hospitals, including Johannesburg’s Charlotte Maxeke Academic hospital, where a patient who claims she was horrified by her experience.

Lutendo Kutama was discharged from the hospital’s maternity ward on Thursday, she claims, after enduring three days of hunger and trauma.

Having carried her pregnancy to term she was referred to the hospital on the Friday 10 July by the Hillbrow Antenatal Clinic. Despite being an at-risk patient, whose high fever was flagged on arrival, she was not isolated and no attempts were made to test her she claims. She was instead taken to a waiting area where some people were under investigation for Covid-19 infection.

She says when she was finally admitted to the maternity ward, she was already hungry from over 12 hours of waiting, while nobody from her family would be allowed to send her food until the next day. Over the weekend she and all the other patients in her ward allegedly only ate did.

“The whole Friday, I didn’t eat a thing. We had eaten around 10 to 11. The following day again they didn’t give us food. We had to eat late. On Sunday the doctor that was attending us, he told us the truth. He said we are not going to operate you today. It’s Sunday and some of the doctors are not in.”

After delivering a healthy baby boy, she was to be left alone again for hours back at her ward. When she came to from anaesthesia, her  baby was next to her, had filled his nappy, and she was in so much pain she could hardly muster up the strength to lift her upper body so she could tend to her child. Pain medication would not be administered for hours as she lay hungry and weak from surgery.

It was only after she cried out to the night nurses, unable to bare the pain that some relief was administered. By this time, the pouch on her catheter had overflowed and her wound was bleeding.

Nevertheless, Kutama was cleared to be discharged the next  morning, after a doctor told her although she normally would have to stay a few days more for monitoring, it was far safer for her and her baby to recover at home. While talking to her sister on the phone, asking her to fetch them, Kutama unknowingly angered a nurse who overheard her conversation. She took issue with the fact that she assumed just because a doctor had told her she was free to go that she would receive her  paperwork and leave.

“We are still busy with other patients and we will do your paperwork when we are ready,” she was apparently told. By midday she had been sworn at and told she would be punished for trying to rush the nurses. She spent the entire day waiting  and left in the late afternoon.

Questions regarding this incident were sent to the Gauteng health department, and spokesperson Philani Mhlungu said answers would be conveyed after an investigation into the matter was concluded.

Incidences such as these are not new or surprising, says DA MPL and member of the Gauteng health portfolio committee,  Jack Bloom.

He is, however, concerned that crowded waiting rooms and lack of space for social distancing put patients such as Kutama at even higher risk. He says innovative solutions such as tents for waiting patients or the use of spaces such as underground parking should be considered to avoid the heightened risks of transmission among patients and between patients and staff.

Covid-19 cases among health department staff were rife at major Gauteng health facilities, while complaints about lack of N95 masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE) prompted unions such as Nehawu and the Young Nurses Indaba Trade Union (YNITU) to call on national government to intervene.

Gauteng Health MEC Bandile Masuku had on Thursday said that the only way to get through the current wave of Covid-19 infections was to have a smooth-running hospital bed management system as the province only had a total of 8,730 acute and critical care/intensive car (ICU) beds in the public and private sector, Gauteng Health MEC Bandile Masuku said on Thursday.

Read More: Covid-19 peak looms in Gauteng

Simnikiweh@citizen.co.za

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