Family concerned about mother’s condition at Witbank Provincial hospital

A 69-year-old woman was admitted into Witbank Provincial Hospital and her family members are concerned about the way she is being treated at the hospital.

On Thursday, August 16 at 14:00 the 69-year-old woman was fetched at her home by an ambulance service as she suffers from chronic back pain.

She was placed onto the gurney and her one son told the paramedics that she was not secured properly. But she was loaded into the ambulance and taken to hospital.

Allegedly when the ambulance arrived at the hospital and they pulled the gurney out of the ambulance, she fell off it, hitting her head and shoulder.

The woman was placed back on the gurney and pushed into the casualty unit. No x-rays were taken and allegedly the incident where she fell off the gurney was never reported.

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On Friday morning, August 17 at approximately 01:00, the woman was finally pushed into a ward, almost 11 hours later after she was pushed into the casualty unit.

The whole Friday, the family kept asking the staff members when will she be taken for x-rays as her neck and shoulder area started to swell up.

By Saturday, August 18 she had not been bathed, so her daughters bathed her as she can’t walk on her own.
By that evening, the 69-year-old woman still had not been for x-rays and she was in so much pain.

That’s when one of her other sons stepped in and insisted that an x-ray gets done. The son told the sister in charge that he wants to report a complaint to the CEO of the hospital straight away.

69-year-old woman admitted into Witbank Provincial Hospital, family concerned about her well-being at the hospital.

The sister in charge contacted the person acting in the CEO’s place for the weekend.
After a while two women came into the ward and spoke to the son.

It’s alleged that the one woman said to the son “you don’t yell at my staff and you disrespect my staff.”
Later that evening the elderly woman was pushed into the x-ray room for x-rays.

By Sunday, August 19, the results for the x-rays were there and the family kept asking for the results but nobody would give the family any answers.

At 15:00 when the daughters were visiting their mother, the cleaning staff was busy cleaning the floors.
One of the daughters asked if they could not clean the floors during visiting hours; that’s when someone called the security to come and remove them as they were complaining.

By 19:00 when the family go to the ward, they walked into the room where their mother was and got the fright of their life when their mother was no longer in that room.

A staff member told them that she was moved to another room as the family was complaining too much.
The family are really concerned as three of their sisters have recently died in the hospital.

The son feels that a government public institution has let them down.

An email was sent to the Mpumalanga Health Department a week ago and a response is still pending from them.