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20090914

Semi-conscious patient ignored at Kimberley Hospital ER

 

“Whatever has happened to our caring for our fellow Man?”, asks angry Kimberley businessman…

b501754ff94f42228ca210bbfe5a99a2 2009-09-14 Frans Coetzee of the Volksblad newspaper reports from Kimberley that they were contacted by a ‘shocked businessman of the city’ after he found a ‘semi-conscious patient outside the emergency department of Kimberley Hospital on Saturday morning at 9am – with an uncaring security guard ‘sunning himself nearby’.

The businessman handed his photographs of the incident over to the newspaper for publication, saying that the security guard said upon questioning that ‘he hadn’t noticed the patient’ although he was only paces away from him. “This patient must have been lying outside for a long time, because when he was lifted onto the trolley by the alerted nursing staff, he was clearly ‘stiff-limbed from the cold’. Two of the guard’s colleagues also were standing around nearby.

The clearly furious businessman said it was ‘shocking that people’s basic humanity are being denied by this gruesome neglect by government officials.’

“These people are needy and totally rely on state-hospitals to look after them. When a helpless patient lies at the very gates of a healing institution begging for help, nobody cares. Whatever happened to our ‘caring for our fellow man’? If the temperature drops below freezing, as it often does in Kimberley, this man would have died of the exposure to cold,’ he added.

Volksblad’s journalist next asked these questions posed by the businessman in a formal inequiry to the health department of the Northern Cape, where its spokesman Andrid Scholtz said that these allegations ‘were being viewed in a very serious light, and a complete and thorough investigation will be launched.’

This unnamed patient’s present condition was not published by the newspaper thus far.

- Volksblad  http://www.volksblad.com/Content/Suid-Afrika/Nuus/2114/a2d795632f8942c2bdc2aa6fabc7923e/14-09-2009-04-22/Hulpelose_pasi%C3%ABnt_l%C3%AA_buite_hospitaal

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