DAUGHTER FORCED TO CARE FOR MOTHER AT MAMELODI HOSPITAL

Standards of care at the Mamelodi Hospital have so deteriorated that the daughter of a patient there has been forced to care for her full-time for more than three days. Mrs Isabella Tisane was admitted to the hospital last Friday (25 February). She had high blood pressure, was unable to eat and was incontinent.

Her daughter Salome was told that her mother had a heart ailment, and that if she did not feed and wash her, as well as give her medicine, no one else would do so. Salome spent the entire weekend looking after her mother, then hired someone else to do the job on Monday. She has now had to take leave from her job at a restaurant.

This is an utterly appalling story. Have standards really sunk so low at our state hospitals? I have taken up this matter with the hospital's CEO Dr Andre van der Walt who has promised to take action. But how could something like this happen in the first place?

Why are nurses apparently happy to abandon a severely ill patient? I am going to demand a full investigation into why treatment is so poor at this hospital.

Statement issued by Jack Bloom MPL, DA Gauteng Health Spokesman, March 1 2011

Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter