The parents of one of the 16 children who had been hospitalised after botched circumcisions by a private doctor in Mokopane, Limpopo, intend filing civil suits against the doctor, the Aurum Institute and the Limpopo Health Department.
A 12-year-old is one of the learners from the Mokopane area who have not healed, months after getting medical circumcision at the doctor’s practice.
The parents say more than three months after the circumcision, their son still travels to the Polokwane Provincial Hospital regularly for medical care.
They say the doctor did not even come to see how the child is doing.
“Now we are taking other steps, we are going to court.”
Meanwhile, the Aurum Institute says it has terminated the doctor’s contract after the Limpopo Health Department indicated that it was investigating the botched procedures.
Aurum Institute spokesperson, Khanya Ndaki, says their investigations revealed that some of the circumcisions had been conducted by people who had not been certified by the institute.
“The doctor had been properly trained and instructed on safe medical circumcision, and this is the first time we had experienced such a high rate of adverse events from his practice.”
“Our contract with him was very clear that the circumcisions must be done by him, the contracted service provider. It must be a medical officer who has been fully vetted by Aurum, and it should not be out-sourced. We immediately suspended our contract because he was in breach of that.”
