Man dead after ‘finger surgery’, family wants answers

Family of a man who died at Kalafong Hospital in Pretoria after being admitted for surgery on his finger is demanding answers, Centurion Rekord reports.

The family, which has asked for anonymity while it considers legal action, said the man sought medical assistance following an assault.

His daughter told Rekord that the hospital had not even bothered to notify the family of his death.

“I found out my father was dead when I went to visit him apparently nine hours after he died,” said the daughter adding that the family was angry and shocked at how badly the hospital had treated him.

She said her father was assaulted on 31 January in Pretoria West, and had waited several days for the “minor operation”.

“He was in hospital for five days, from 1 to 5 February. On 4 February, the family had visited him. He was healthy and in high spirits,” said the daughter.

“When I visited again at 15:00 the following day, I was told he had died ‘between 05:00 and 06:00’. I’m so sure they [hospital staff] gave him something they shouldn’t have.”

She says her 54 year old father had been assaulted without any apparent reason in Lotus Gardens a few days before.

“They just grabbed him out of the car and started hitting him [with various objects]. He was hit on the head, sustained a broken finger and cracked bone in the arm and was briefly treated at Pretoria West Hospital then transferred to Kalafong for surgery on his broken finger.”

“Every day, he believed that he would be operated on, but the hospital kept postponing the operation. The day before he died, he was fine, made jokes, ate the food we’d brought, and he told us he’d be going for his operation that night.”

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She said she had had an altercation with unfamiliar hospital staff that night.

“I asked where the toilet was and they were so rude to me.”

She said barely 10 minutes into the visit, the family was rudely told to leave, because visiting hours were over and the family quietly left promising their father to return the next day not knowing it was the last time they would see him alive.

“Nobody phoned us to let us know.

“Now you tell me, how could he have passed away if he only had to get an operation on one of his fingers? We were there just the day before, and he was fine.”

His shocked doctor had ordered a postmortem and since then getting the paperwork from the hospital and the mortuary had been a struggle.

The woman’s story mirrors a deluge of other accounts by readers who had come forward since Rekord first published a story in February about accusations of maltreatment of patients at Kalafong Hospital.

Gauteng department of health spokesperson Prince Hamnca said the department had launched an investigation into the man’s death after the family complained. He said the department wanted to establish what had caused the hospital not to inform the family of the patient’s death.

“The patient was admitted with injury to the finger but was not taken to theatre. The patient had history of him having sustained injuries due to assault by community members and he was assessed by neurosurgery doctors and a CT scan excluded head injuries. Also, he was examined by general surgeons who excluded internal injuries. However, internal medicine doctors who examined him diagnosed him with a medical condition which cannot be disclosed due to doctor-patient confidentiality. He collapsed in the ward and was resuscitated, without success and his body was taken for forensic pathology due to the history of assault.”

– Caxton News Service

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