A Rustenburg hospital and three doctors are being sued by a father for the death of his daughter in the ICU, whom he alleges died after what he called a catastrophic failure of medical care, including an ICU doctor who allegedly issued instructions via WhatsApp without setting foot at her bedside, reports News24.
The case in the North West High Court (Mahikeng) has cleared a critical legal hurdle after Acting Judge Thato Tsautse dismissed a bid by the ICU doctor, Dr Shuping Mokgosi of Life Peglerae Hospital, to have the lawsuit thrown out before it could go to trial.
On 16 April 2021, the young woman had undergone a Caesarean section at Life Peglerae when things went wrong. During the procedure, she sustained a small-bowel injury, a serious complication that required an urgent second operation, a laparotomy, on the same day to repair the damage.
After surgery, she was moved to ICU in a septic state, her body fighting a severe infection.
It was here that her family says the system failed her.
According to the judgment, Mokgosi was the on-call ICU physician who accepted responsibility for her care. But the family alleges he was frequently unreachable and never came to examine her in person. When nursing staff made urgent calls as her condition worsened, he allegedly remained absent.
In her ruling, Tsautse recorded that “urgent calls to the fourth defendant went unanswered”, and that he “continued managing the deceased’s care remotely, without conducting a bedside assessment or physical examination”.
Instead, instructions were issued by phone and via WhatsApp, by doctors who, the family says, did not have full information about her deteriorating state and had not physically assessed her.
The woman’s blood pressure, the judgment records, was “alarmingly decreasing”.
Also, no adequate handover was arranged, no doctor with full knowledge of her case was put in place to cover, and, within hours, she was dead.
The woman’s father, Kereng Andrew Morakile, along with Katlego Macdonald Chowf, are now seeking damages from Life Peglerae Hospital, Mokgosi, Dr Sam Amoakwa-Adu and Dr Ikennacletus Okeke.
The judgment does not specify how Chowf, who is listed as the second plaintiff, is related to the woman.
The family is claiming loss of support and related damages, though no specific amount has been disclosed in the judgment.
Mokgosi argued that the case against him should be thrown out before it even reached trial.
His legal team contended that because the bowel injury occurred during the C-section, an operation he did not perform, there was no legal link between his conduct and her death.
The autopsy, he argued, supported his position: she died from septic complications arising from that bowel injury, not from anything he did or failed to do.
“Logic dictates, his lawyers submitted, “that she would have died in any event.”
The court did not accept that argument.
Tsautse ruled that the argument was, “in truth, a factual defence which goes to the merits, not to the sufficiency of the pleadings”, adding that Mokgosi’s reliance on the autopsy findings, “and his attempt to draw inferences therefrom to negate causation, are matters for trial and cannot defeat a properly pleaded cause of action”.
She found it “at least reasonably arguable that, but for the fourth defendant’s negligent omissions in the ICU, the deceased would probably have survived or at least enjoyed a materially better chance of survival”.
Mokgosi has been ordered to file his plea within 15 days.
Life Peglerae Hospital, which is part of the Life Healthcare group, remains a defendant in the case. The hospital’s own liability will also be tested when the matter proceeds to trial.
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