The Free State Department of Health condemned the behaviour of patients captured on a video circulating on social media, helping themselves to alcohol on an accident scene after a truck jackknifed on the N8 between Bloemfontein and Botshabelo on Tuesday.

Patients were en route from Dr. JS Moroka Hospital in Thaba Nchu to Pelonomi Tertiary Hospital in a vehicle used for government-planned patient transport for specialist care.

The department said ‘it is unimaginable that a person who is supposedly sick, would suddenly be fit enough to pick up alcoholic beverages [on the accident scene] and then have the audacity to load it into a state vehicle meant to ferry patients to a health facility’.

The patients’ conduct makes a mockery of efforts to provide people in the Free State with quality services, the department said.

A preliminary investigation by the department indicates that the persons who loaded the liquor into the vehicle were not government officials and that the driver was focusing on the traffic ahead of him, allegedly unaware of what patients were doing.

Honole hectic 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/oELtwgzjfw

— KaRaBo🏴‍☠️🇿🇦 (@KAYBRO_ZA) October 18, 2023