A Limpopo family has lodged a complaint with the Department of Health after the Musina Hospital allegedly took six days to inform them about the death of a family member. The family could not visit the hospital as visitors are no allowed due to COVID 19 regulations.
They tried to phone the hospital two days after his admission to inquire about his condition, but hospital officials told them to wait and the management will revert to them. But the promise, the family says, never materialised.
Samuel Ndou was admitted at the hospital on the 15th June and died the following day.
“He was admitted on the 15th and died on the 17th of this month, even though we had left our contacts at the hospital but the officials never bothered to phone us to tell us about his passing on. We are not happy and we are asking ourselves questions. We don’t think its how members of the community should be treated if a family member died in hospital. We could not visit the hospital because of the coronavirus, but we expected them to contact us but they did not,” says Family Spokesperson, Anikie Mudau.
“We phoned the hospital on the 17th to inquire about his health and we were told to wait, they will revert back to us. We waited then until on the 23rd when someone from to mortuary section phoned us. We were not called by the nurses, doctors or management of the hospital. It’s only a mortuary staff member who phones after realising that it has been six days since the body was brought there and they had not been any family member coming to make arrangements,” says Madau.
Provincial Health Spokesperson Neil Shikwambana says they are investigating the matter.
“We can’t comment now, because the family has come to us and laid a complaint through our quality assurance office. So, when a person laid a complain we must then institute and investigation, so that we give a report that is informed by investigation but the standard way of handling issues is that when a person passes on in the hospital we should be able to contact or we should contact his or her next to kin to notify them,” says Shikwambana.
Shikwambana says the results of the investigation will be given to the family.
