Patients kick up a stink at clinic over facilities

POLOKWANE – Residents are unhappy with the state of the ablution facilities at the Rethabile Clinic.

According to some patients who regularly use the clinic’s services, there was a strong urine smell in the bathrooms and the toilets and floor were dirty.

The patients said there were different ablution facilities in different parts of the clinic, but there were two specific areas that were used frequently; one at the pharmacy and one where people wait in queue to have their blood pressure checked.

“The toilets have a strong urine stench. As a woman I feel very uncomfortable using the toilet at the clinic because I am afraid of infection.

“When you sit in the blood pressure queue, you can smell the urine stench even if the toilet door is closed and this is bad, because a person has to wait for a long time in the queue; inhaling this horrible smell,” one patient said.

Another patient who visited the clinic this week exposed the bad state of the bathrooms on a Facebook chat page on Monday.

The patient posted a comment anonymously: “I was at Rethabile (Clinic) today (Monday) and the place stinks. In one of the toilets there was faeces on the floor. One of the toilets is leaking and another broken. This is horrible, and I feel sorry for the elderly people who must use these toilets. Can’t a person get someone from the department of health to go and look at the clinic’s disgusting toilets?”

After the post on Facebook, Adéle van der Linde, a department of health spokesperson, said she took a tour of the clinic’s ablution facilities with the clinic’s management on Wednesday morning.

They visited the outpatient department, pharmacy, maternity and staff toilets and Van der Linde said the ablution facilities were not filthy and no faeces were observed on the floor.

However, she did confirm there was a particular day that the cleaning staff had had to clean faeces off the floor.

“The problem with public toilets in a building that is visited by hundreds of people in a 24-hour period is that, when someone abuses a toilet and leaves the place dirty, one cannot blame the cleaning staff,” she said.

Van der Linde added that the staff would do their rounds and clean up any mess, but if a visitor went to the toilet before the cleaning staff did, they could find the facilities dirty and should immediately inform management, who would in turn inform the staff to clean up that particular toilet as a matter of urgency.

“The facilities are cleaned with disinfectant cleaners daily,” she said.

Van der Linde said in some of the toilets, the floors did need extra attention.

“The smell in all but one toilet was also acceptable and during my visit all the toilets were flushing.

“One urinal was not working, but has been covered and reported. The toilet in the pharmacy was the only toilet where an unpleasant smell was present and something nasty was observed in the bottom of the toilet.

Management will take this up with the night staff who are responsible for the pharmacy toilet,” she said.