Doctors warn that SA's public hospitals are "filthy, vermin-infested nightmares"

MARCH 21. Patients' many complaints are true about having to endure vermin-infested, filthy government teaching hospitals where female patients are left unguarded from thugs and uncaring nurses force patients to nurse and clean themselves in cockroach- and rodent-infested rooms, a team of doctors have told Beeld newspaper.

The team of young doctors, in training at Kalafong Hospital outside Pretoria , said they broke through the government's wall of censorship to warn the public about the "desperately appalling and filthy" conditions at government teaching hospitals such as Kalafong near Pretoria. The doctors said their many complaints to government officials over the past four years are being ignored.

The appalling conditions at Kalafong were highlighted recently by maternity patient Mrs. Dorothea Henning of Hennops River, who described the delivery of her first child in January as "a nightmare", where she was forced to give birth in a rodent- and cockroach-infested room and where her husband had to change her bed linen, bring cooking- and disinfecting utensils from home for the care of their baby, and had to guard his wife throughout from a great many strange men who were visiting the partying nurses. The nurses also had been exceedingly rude and had refused to provide even the most basic nursing services to the new mother and baby.

The doctors said such complaints from patients like Mrs Henning are "completely true."

"It is unfair to hide such hideous conditions from the public. Tomorrow, one of the members of the public might also have to be brought here, only to be told: "sorry but we might only be able to give you emergency surgery next week," the doctors said.

"The conditions at the giovernment's teaching hospitals is so unhygienic and appalling that we doubt that anything can still be done to correct them. Every day there's no clean linen, for instance, and things have deteriorated so badly that emergency surgery can no longer be performed," one doctor warned.

The hospitals have no disinfectants, bandages, intravenous drips nor antibiotics in stock. Patients who arrive for emergency treatment from as far afield as Nelspruit, Witbank and Ermelo have to wait for days to be treated.

The doctor said they hours of valuable time waiting for clean surgery theatres in the tearoom -- and the theatres are too filthy to perform operations safely, and the instruments antiquated. "We feel we are completely wasting our time here..

"Emergency trauma patients have to wait at least twelve hours for admission because only one "emergency theatre" is still operative at Pretoria Academic Hospital. I know of patients with burst appendixes who are being forced to wait for two days for emergency surgery."

Kalafong hospital's superintendent, Dr Nookaraju Challa, asked to comment by Beeld's journalist, confirmed that cockroaches and linen were a chronic problem -- however doctors were not allowed to speak to the news media. He urged the trainees to instead report such problems to their departmental heads.

Challa confirmed that out of the 41 scheduled surgeries on Monday -- of which 13 had been major operations -- 14 had to be cancelled due to the lack of sterile linen.