Four mothers have filed a joint court action against a Mpumalanga hospital and the province after two bodies of stillborn babies went missing while two other newborns had their arms amputated due to alleged gross negligence.
The incidents happened at the Witbank Hospital in eMalahleni between December 2020 and June 2021.
Two mothers who gave birth to stillborn babies at the hospital said their children's bodies either went missing or were swapped at the facility.
Two other children had their arms amputated at the hospital due to negligence after initially being admitted at another facility for diarrhoea in March and June.
One mother of a stillborn baby whose body was swapped said the hospital conducted an illegal exhumation to fix the error.
The application, which is now before the Mpumalanga high court in Middelburg, alleges gross medical negligence, abuse of power and infringement of the mother's constitutional rights.
The mothers' lawyer, Mabu Marweshe, said his clients' dignity had been infringed solely on the basis that they were "black women, marginalised and victims of the compounded maleficence and gross medical negligence".
They want the court to declare that the hospital's failure to take proper custody of the remains of stillborn babies and failure to conduct an investigation and DNA tests when bodies had been mixed up unlawful.
In her founding affidavit, Cynthia Sibanyoni, 35, whose stillborn baby was lost at the hospital, said they were victims of maleficence, abuse of power, poor service delivery and failure by the health MEC and the hospital CEO to fulfill their vested constitutional obligations.
Sibanyoni, from Ackerville in eMalahleni, has accused hospital CEO Khumbuzile Madonsela and health MEC Sasekani Manzini of failing in their duties to investigate how the body of her stillborn went missing at the hospital.
She accused the two of having "not conducted any investigation pertaining to the allegation of the death and the disappearance of the remains of my stillborn child – neither has DNA test been conducted on the remains found in the hospital refrigerator".
Sibanyoni, who had been visiting the hospital for a routine pregnancy check-up on December 11, however ended up being booked for a Caesarean operation after nurses raised concerns about her blood pressure being too high.
"The operation was successful but I never saw the remains of the stillborn child and was never even informed about the gender," stated Sibanyoni in her court papers.
When she asked about the remains of her baby, the hospital indicated that they could not be located until she was discharged on December 14.
"In terms of our culture, the remains of the stillborn child were supposed to be buried on the day in question... the burial never took place because the remains of the stillborn child were still missing," she said.
Sibanyoni described one visit to the hospital in January when inquiring about the remains' whereabouts where they were shown a "grisly and traumatising sights of two dead babies that did not have a nose..." and no name tags.
Charles Ndlovu, the Mpumalanga health department's acting deputy director of legal services and legislation, described Sibanyoni's incident as part of a series of "unfortunate events".
He denied that Sibanyoni’s dignity has been violated. “The applicant's rights have not been violated, or at least not intentionally so. I admit that the confusion regarding baby Cynthia (Sibanyoni’s stillborn baby) is unacceptable,” Ndlovu said.
Rachel Malope, the second applicant whose baby's remains were handed over to another family in December 2020 and subsequently buried, said the hospital embarked on illegal exhumation without a court order.
"They further refused to conduct DNA tests on the exhumed remains of the alleged stillborn child. To date, no investigations had been carried out pertaining to this matter," Malope stated. .
Lindo Sweleni and Dineo Mathebula's children had their hands and arms amputated due to medical negligence.
Sweleni stated that her child was admitted in hospital for diarrhoea in March but left the facility with an amputated hand.
Mathebula's child, a then two-month-old baby, was also amputated at the Witbank hospital after initially being admitted at the notorious Bernice Samuel Hospital in Delmas for diarrhoea.
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