Riverlea: Free health care, costly execution
No longer a caring, high-quality health system.
Due to the high unemployment rate in our community, many residents depend on government facilities for medical assistance, but what happens when the services they provide causes more harm than good? When it comes to dentistry, people have always been sceptical about having their teeth extracted.
From a young age, fear is instilled in us and we avoid the dentist until the pain becomes unbearable. On June 6, Ewald Julius (55) from Riverlea could not stand the pain from his toothache and decided to visit the Newlands Dental Clinic where he went to extract a troublesome molar.
On his arrival at 6 am he joined the line with many other patients in desperate need of dental care. He was fortieth in the queue with the knowledge that he actually had three damaged teeth.
- Related Story: Why are there still private wards at Joburg Hospital?
While they waited on the dentists to call them, Julius said that the other patients were complaining about the service they received at the clinic.
“They said that this woman is dangerous (referring to the dentist).
The other girl said to me ‘you know I have no choice, I have to come here but these people like to extract, they do not even want to put a filling in for you,’ said Julius. Julius suffers from high blood pressure and was referred to the Newlands Clinic to monitor this condition.
When he came back to the dentist he was then called in. “I laid down on the table there, she said to me ‘just relax’ and she had that tweezer thing that they use to extract your teeth with.
“She put the thing into my mouth, I felt that she was grabbing the wrong tooth so I tried to indicate this to her, she said ‘keep quiet, lay still, don’t move you’re going to get hurt.
“She didn’t listen to me, she pulled the wrong tooth”, Julius explains.
According to Julius, he was in pain and was truly upset with the student dentist. She then asked him to show her the damaged tooth and told him to lay down so that she could inject him again to numb the pain.
Julius received three injections in his gum within a short time frame.
“Then she came again, she grabbed the tooth and she broke it”, according to the patient his tooth was rotten and cracked.
Julius added, “The tooth was then broken off inside my mouth, then she took those tweezers and stuck it inside my gum and pulled, I said to her ‘Haai, you are hurting me man’ and she said to me ‘lay still’ and then she started digging inside of that hole, pulling it out and then she hurt my jaw, something to do with my gum line.”
Julius said, “The senior dentist told her that she hurt me unnecessarily.”
‘Look what you did here on the jaw line that is protruding through his gum line’, said the senior dentist. Julius explained that the blood was literally running out of his mouth, and he felt light-headed due to the blood loss.
“I feel that these free clinics if it is for the public, why must they put people through unnecessary pain, it doesn’t mean that because it’s free that they must now treat us like animals”, said Julius.
- Related Story: Watch: Video of Charlotte Maxeke Hospital entrance collapse
Julius can still feel something hard in his mouth, so he is not sure if there’s still a piece of the tooth stuck in the gum. While there are many patients who have been through such pain, they have not reported it.
He added, “It looks like if you go to these free clinics, you get the worst treatment ever. It’s free so we must just keep quiet and accept the way it is, I don’t want to accept it anymore.
“We are not guinea pigs, why must they experiment on us?”
Regular dental treatment at a private dentist costs about R420, this includes consultation, an X-ray scan and then the final procedure.
Those who cannot afford private treatment are left to accept the service they receive from ‘free clinics’.
For more news follow us on these platforms:
Twitter: @SowetoUrban, Facebook: Soweto Urban News, Instagram: @SowetoUrban
News site 1: Westside-Eldos Urban News, News site 2: Soweto Urban News
