Surgery at Rob Ferreira Hospital causes worry

An 11-year-old girl is going through a traumatic experience after stitches on her abdomen opened four times following an operation at Rob Ferreira Hospital.

Her wound opened after an appendix operation on January 17.

She was discharged on January 25. According to her sister, Andile Sithole, when she returned to the hospital they stitched her again but it just kept opening.

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“At some point I refused to sign a form to give permission for the hospital to take her to theatre. I just could not bear the thought of her facing all these things all over again, and worse they do not want to tell me what is wrong with her. It seems as if things will never get better, I feel miserable having to watch her going through all this and I cannot do anything to help her,” she explained.

 
Her trouble started when she started feeling pain in her abdomen and the caretakers at her orphanage informed her sister. She was taken to the clinic in Pienaar and transferred to Rob Ferreira Hospital.

Sithole says she was initially told that it will only be a minor appendix surgery.

“The doctor told me that the cut on her stomach will be short, but when I saw her after the procedure was done it looked longer than what they had said. They said it is confidential, it is between the hospital staff and the patient. My sister is too young to understand and as her elder sister I need to know.

Since our mother passed away, she and my brother are my responsibility. I need to make sure she is okay and I do not understand why the hospital is refusing to explain to me.”

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Sithole says it is like a nightmare and fears. During one of her visits at the hospital, a concerned witness told her how she saw doctors stitching her without using anaesthetic.

“The witness said she saw her begging them to stop. She screamed saying, ‘I can feel the needle going through my flesh.’

On February 8, the hospital issued her with a discharge letter.

“When I went to the hospital and saw the letter I refused that she be discharged, because what will happen to her if she mistakenly bumps into something?” she explained.
On March 4, she was still in the hospital and they were still in the dark about her condition.

When Lowvelder enquired with the Department of Health, the spokesman Dumisani Malamule said wound sepsis was causing the stitches to keep opening and the wound not healing.

He claimed that every step was discussed with the child in the presence of a social worker, as the caregiver was not present at the time. Sithole says her sister knows nothing about this meeting.

Malamule also said the procedure that was done in the ward was minor. “It was done to appose the tissue for faster healing of the wound. No wound is stitched without injection (anaesthetic injection). The doctor used local anesthesia before suturing,” he said.

Malamule added that their reason for discharging her was that the wound had improved.

“She was discharged to continue dressing at the local clinic so that she can go back to school,” he said.

After Lowvelder enquired with the department, the hospital management called Sithole to explain her sister’s condition.

By the time of going to press they had promised to take her into theatre on Friday for the last time.