For seven months Mandisa Mkhumbeni has had to rely on adult nappies after a botched operation that left her with a punctured bladder.
Mkhumbeni is among 10 families from Delmas, Mpumalanga, who have handed over a memorandum of grievances to the Mpumalanga department of health demanding action be taken against staff at the notorious Bernice Samuel Hospital.
Sowetan last week reported on an infant that was admitted for diarrhoea but ended up with her hand amputated due to alleged negligence at the same hospital. This matter has seen three doctors and a nurse being suspended pending full investigation into the matter.
Now more families who received treatment at the facility have told of other horrors in the hands of health-care workers in the facility. Some said their relatives' bodies went missing after death, others alleged they were given wrong medication and fed rotten food, while others spoke of a culture of intimidation by the hospital staff.
Mkhumbeni, 29, can no longer live a normal life because of what she believes to be medical negligence. “I can’t be active like my peers and go out to social places like malls and visit friends because of my inexplicable health condition,” she said.
In August last year the mother of one was attended to at the Bernice Samuel Hospital after she had bladder infection complaints. “I regret ever going there to get help. They destroyed me. I now depend on diapers every day because my urine leaks endlessly,” she said.
Mkhumbeni said she was mistakenly diagnosed with cervical cancer. “They never checked me with sonar or ran tests. I was just cut, inserted with a catheter [tube] below my belly, stitched and sent back home the same day.”
Mkhumbeni said she had been given medication for the bladder infection before a catheter was inserted to drain the urine and assist her to urinate.
“I had finished my medication but because my condition was not improving I came back to the hospital. I was swollen and I couldn't pee. Then my nightmare began.”
She claimed doctors did not tell her what was wrong with her.
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Mkhumbeni claimed doctors used her as an experiment to teach a student doctor how to insert a catheter.
“They held me down to the bed... I was in pain and I asked for painkillers but he cut me unsedated.”
Mkhumbeni said the doctor cut her open under the belly while she watched. “He cut me then pushed the pipe inside me. I felt a hot liquid burning inside me. Watery fluids gushed out. He then stitched me and said I'll be fine.”
After two weeks she went back for a check-up and that was when she was told she had cervical cancer and had to be transferred to Witbank Hospital in Emalahleni for further treatment. Witbank doctors did not find the cancer but only warts, which they removed.
She said the doctor who initially attended to her could only say “sorry” when she gave them the diagnosis from Witbank Hospital.
She said the insertion of the catheter had damaged her bladder and the doctors were not taking any responsibility.
“I'm left to bear the cost of diapers and medication and I'm unemployed,” said Mkhumbeni.
In another incident, Mbali Jiyane, 24, claimed that she had lost her womb after doctors at the same hospital left a placenta inside her stomach after she gave birth through a caesarean operation last year.
“My stomach inflamed and upon readmission doctors discovered that the placenta was still inside me and had rotten and damaged. My womb had to be removed. The hospital also just said sorry and life had to go on,” she said.
Laiza Mbokwane claimed that her four-month-old grandchild was left with a gaping wound on her buttock after she was injected and bandaged by a nurse at the hospital after being admitted for fever.
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