‘My dying mom was told: You’re lazy, not sick’
In a 30-minute cellphone recording made a few days before she died, Tryphina Mkwe related her alleged abuse by nurses to her daughter.
|||Pretoria - Steve Biko Academic Hospital nurses allegedly told a dying patient needing help that she was just lazy; not sick.
Tryphina Mkwe had been weak and needing assistance with her disposable nappy. After gathering as much strength as she could, she got off the bed and on to a chair.
This is in a cellphone recording made when Mkwe related the horror to her daughter Enika Pitso a few days before she died last Friday.
Pitso’s face contorted in emotion on Monday as she listened to her mother’s weak voice describing the alleged physical and emotional abuse at the hands of nurses at the public hospital.
In the recording, Mkwe told her daughter and a hospital manager she was called lazy and not sick, and that she needed to stop acting up. “They ordered me off the chair, and when I eventually did, I fell to my knees and the contents of my nappy spilt on to the floor,” Mkwe said in a distressed voice in the 30-minute recording.
“Three nurses smacked me and asked what I expected them to do. They asked how they were supposed to help me.”
The patient said they continued to hit and shout at her, saying she should get up. “But I could not as I was weak, so they forced me up and kept on shouting at me while they cleaned me up.”
Mkwe had been in hospital for a week when the alleged assault took place. She was admitted for an investigative procedure for jaundice diagnosed at a Limpopo hospital.
The 51-year-old walked into the hospital on April 26 for the procedure, scheduled for two days later. “My mother was fine; she walked into the hospital on her own.”
Mkwe could bath and feed herself for the first four days of her hospital stay. “But within five days, she had grown so weak and lost weight she could hardly get out of bed.”
Mkwe’s health deteriorated so badly that she required disposable nappies, and had severe vomiting and diarrhoea. “For four of those days she was not on medication, had no drip or anything,” Pitso said.
After seven days in hospital, Mkwe had still not been taken to theatre. In a meeting with doctors on the eighth day, Pitso was told her mother was not strong enough. “The doctor was surprised to hear she was not eating or getting medication.”
According to Pitso, the student doctors treating her mother had not mentioned anything. Then, for the first time, her mother was given supplements, hooked up on to a drip and given medication.
But early the next morning, Pitso said, her mother was on the phone, asking to be taken home. “She begged me to remove her from the hospital because of abuse from nurses.”
The sick woman told her daughter how the impatient nurses had assaulted her the previous night, an accusation she repeated when Pitso and the operations manager spoke to her.
Her account of the abuse is in the recording, which the Pretoria News has listened to. Subsequently, the hospital assured the family an investigation would be conducted.
But the process was abandoned the following day after Pitso asked for police intervention. “The nurses told me to my face that they would only stop assaulting her if she stopped acting like a big baby.”
Pitso said they also told her to report the matter to the Gauteng Health MEC or Health Ministry, if she wanted to. While the family grappled with that, they were told Mkwe was dying of cancer “and they could no longer treat her. Suddenly there was no mention of the jaundice”.
Mkwe also had advanced kidney failure, the family was told.
Last Thursday, she regained strength. Doctors said they would proceed with the original line of treatment. “As we tried to absorb that, she died. We watched her hospital struggle. It’s been very painful.”
Gauteng Health Department spokesman Steve Mabona said Mkwe had a chronic illness which affected her immunity and predisposed her to many other serious conditions.
“The procedure would have been investigative and palliative. Mkwe was too ill,” he said, adding that she developed kidney failure and mental confusion.
But Pitso rubbished this. “How dare they say she had a mental problem to cover up for the wrongdoings of the nurses?”
ntando.makhubu@inl.co.za
Pretoria News