Free State health inquiry: Patients speak

Veli Rgadebe, Harrismith

Rgadebe's daughter was pregnant and went to Thebe Hospital for a C-section. She gave birth to a baby girl.

“What brought me here today is the fact that after she gave birth she had a problem with coughing and she was taken in and out of hospitals. Sometimes I'd get to the hospital and the patient would sit from eight till around about one every day. And then they gave me a book where I could lay my complaint and that's where I jotted down my complaint,” said Rgadebe.

She only became sick after her pregnancy. When she was ill again, after multiple attempts to get help, he took his daughter to see a doctor named Lucky. The doctor said they need to go straight to hospital. They called an ambulance but it never came. Realising his daughter might lose her life, he took her to hospital himself. He found a nurse behind the counter and asked for the supervisor to speak about bringing his daughter inside. The supervisor pointed to a wheelchair and the elderly man said he would not be able to get her into the wheelchair on his own. “I need assistance.” The hospital official said if he's not going to abide by the rules he should leave the hospital. He asked for assistance and she said she was busy. He said they should give him something to help. She maintained that he must follow the rules.

He left the wheelchair and went back outside to where his daughter was still lying where he left her. Still looking for help, he found three girls who helped put her back in the car before he drove back to the doctor Lucky.

He gave her some medication and said that again they needed to call an ambulance, but again it never arrived. They went back to the hospital and again ran into the supervisor. “Where did you think you were going to end up? This is my hospital. You listen to my rules,” Rgadebe was told. Eventually they managed to get her inside, without assistance from the hospital staff, and a doctor appeared. She was taken for treatment, but when the doctor came out it was too late, Rgadebe's daughter had died. “That's how the story ended.”

Anna Motaung, Monotsha

When Motaung's child was sick, she took the girl to Elizabeth Ross Hospital in Mangaung. It was a Monday. On Tuesday they said they'd be giving her blood. When she visited on Wednesday, the child was weak, much worse than when she was admitted. Thursday it was worse. The tests from the clinic weren't back yet so she didn't yet know what was wrong with her daughter. On Friday she went back and the child wasn't in the ward. The staff made her seem foolish, she said. They told her to go and check all the wards. She asked again and didn't get a clear answer. A patient told her the child had been taken to “step down”, but was scared to tell her where it was. Eventually, a security guard told her “step down” was further away, part of the mortuary.

She found two people there, Motaung's voice breaking as she recalled the scene. “When I think about her eyes, they were staring at me she could not even speak.” The child was only staring but she couldn't speak, she repeated. There was a corpse near the door, she said, and her daughter wasn't receiving any medication or assistance. She said the medication administered at the ward was still inside her mouth. She took it out but the girl still couldn't speak.

She went back to the hospital to speak with the nurse and demand she take her child home because there was no point keeping her there to die. The nurse refused to discharge her and said the girl would die when they arrived at home. It was either that or have her die in the hospital anyway, without any help from the staff. Eventually, she took her girl home. She died a week later.

Betty Mabuza, Welkom

Mabuza was pregnant last year. At nine months, she went to the Thabong Clinic this February, hoping to be transferred to hospital. There the nurse told her she could only receive medication, not a transfer to the hospital, because across her check-ups the size of her stomach seemed to fluctuate and the hospital doctors would simply send her back. She felt symptoms she couldn't understand and walked the long distance to Khotsong Clinic. On the way she'd called her mother and told her she thinks she's about to give birth. After waiting at the second clinic without luck, she eventually went home and then straight to the hospital.

There she waited again. Eventually she was taken to a room and told to lie face-up while a number of nurses inspected her. They felt nothing and told her to wait for the doctor. The doctor came and after inspecting her looked her in the eyes and asked what it means if the child's heart isn't beating. Recalling the incident, she paused to sob into tissues. Before she was transferred into another room, the doctor said, “This child that you're carrying died in January,” a month before.

She was alone in the room, in terrible pain. A nurse finally came to help and asked if she could give birth alone. When the nurse checked again the baby's head was already coming out. She was the only person to help her give birth and Mabuza pushed until she felt like she was about to die. After birth she saw they baby. It looked terrible, looked rotten. Then Mabuza was was left in the corridors, covered in blood. It was only when the nurses changed shift that she was attended to. DM