More malarkey at Standerton Hospital

Shocking reports of healthcare workers carrying patients up and down staircases at Standerton Hospital have sent waves of shock through the community. Critically ill patients are forced to use the stairs, as the elevators have been out of order for four months. Healthcare workers have to carry patients on their backs, while others are carried in makeshift slings made of sheets. Further aggrivating the matter, is the fact that the operating theatre is on the second floor of the hospital, brining into question how emergency patients are taken to surgery, and how groggy and anaesthetized patients are transported from surgery back to their rooms.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has launched an investigation into the matter, and has also learned that the hospital has run out of theatre clothing. Patients are just wrapped with a cloth or a sheet, walking up and down the stairs naked. According to the DA, this is inhumane, and a complete violation of a patient's rights to privacy. The DA has therefore called upon the Provincial Government, particularly the Department of Health and Public Works, to urgently repair or replace the elevators at Standerton Hospital, and that the hospital must be provided with theatre clothing with immediate effect to restore patients’ dignity. The DA is pleased to announce that a tabled motion in the Mpumalanga Provincial Legislature on this particular matter has been adopted.

This isn’t the first scandal faced by the embattled hospital. Serious complaints have been lodged against the hospital and it its management, including breaches of patient confidentiality, unattended patients falling and sustaining serious injuries, and the overall filthy and disheveled condition of the hospital itself. Enquiries to the Department of Health’s spokesperson, Dumisani Malamule, yielded no result.