KABOKWENI – Themba Hospital is in the news once again following our last week’s exposé. An informant gave us a detailed minute-to-minute account of what occurred on Sunday. She said, “We had been in our weekly women’s society meeting when one of my friends experienced severe stomach ache and we had to take her to the local clinic.
“On arrival, she was attended to promptly and referred to the hospital. Mind you, from the clinic she was transported by an ambulance as it was an emergency case. We got to Themba, there was no porter to take care of the patient, but he was seated a short distance away and showed no interest at all. “She was placed in a worn-out rusty wheelchair with no tyres. That was around 13:15. Nobody registered us or cared about our patient. We found many others waiting to be attended to and they also informed us that they’d been there for hours. Also cutting a lonely figure in one corner, was a white woman who’d been dropped off by an ambulance and who was obviously very ill. The staff complained that she smelled and placed her on a stretcher outside the entrance. “The worst was still to come when at about 16:00 the staff announced they were knocking off without having attended to a single patient since our arrival. They never even handed us over to the next shift to explain emergency cases and so forth. We had to explain our case frantically to them and then only were we attended to.
“This hospital urgently needs intervention from authorities or else it will result in the death of patients. I took photos and told them I was going to report them to the media but they did not care,” said our informant.
