A Johannesburg hospital has apologised to a couple who endured a frustrating 10-hour wait for attention last week, despite their pleas for help and the woman's request for pain medication, reports TimesLIVE.
The woman’s husband eventually broke down down in tears in front of staff and patients at the Rahima Moosa Mother & Child Hospital, a moment he believes finally forced the system to respond.
Silindokuhle Matabata said he and his wife had been to church in the morning, but shortly afterwards his wife, who was believed to be two weeks pregnant, began bleeding.
“We went to a gynaecologist who referred us to Parkhurst Clinic the next day. From there, we were sent to Rahima Moosa Mother and Child Hospital, where we arrived at about 9am on the Monday.”
His wife was in pain, he said. “We opened a file and sat waiting but nothing happened.”
After a long four hours, she was taken to the fourth floor, where, he added, there were women whose situations were far more serious, but no doctor attended to them.
He said they remained at the hospital until 7pm, with little information or help. As men are not allowed to wait on the fourth floor, Matabata said he spent most of the time sitting in his car, checking on his wife periodically.
“At about 8pm, I started panicking. We had left our 10-year-old child alone at home. Just before 9pm, my wife gave up hope. She was in severe pain and begged doctors for an injection to ease it, but her pleas fell on deaf ears.”
At that point, Matabata could no longer contain his frustration.
“I broke down because I could not take it anymore,” he said, adding that it was clear the staff were overwhelmed.
“You could see doctors running up and down, but just too busy to help us. I asked (for us) to be released. I was told to sign a form stating that if anything happened, it would not be the hospital’s responsibility.”
After spending close to 10 hours without receiving care, he felt he had no option: he signed the release form – and posted about the ordeal on X.
Shortly afterwards, he said a senior doctor attended to his wife.
“She said my wife had a blighted ovum – where the body thinks it is pregnant, but there is no developing baby, only a sac. She said they would review her again next week.”
But Matabata said the entire harrowing experience had left him deeply shaken.
“Even to get a doctor’s sick note stamped, we had to wait,” he said. “The service was extremely poor.”
The Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa’s (Denosa) Gauteng provincial secretary Bongani Mazibuko said Rahima Moosa Hospital has a critical shortage of staff, particularly nurses.
The incident comes amid ongoing scrutiny of the facility by the Office of the Health Ombud, which has previously raised concerns about patient safety, staffing shortages, governance failures and long waiting times.
In past investigations, the Health Ombud highlighted that prolonged delays in care, poor communication with patients, and inadequate staffing, all posed serious risks, particularly in maternity and obstetric cases.
Matabata said his experience reflected those systemic failures.
“No one should have to collapse in tears just to get help in a hospital,” he said.
The hospital has since apologised, with Gauteng Health saying the quality assurance unit had conducted a preliminary review of the incident, including direct engagement with the patient.
“The department can confirm the patient was clinically processed, triaged and managed in accordance with established public hospital protocols, which prioritise patients based on clinical urgency rather than order of arrival,” it said.
The patient’s file and vital signs were completed at 1.52pm in the gynaecology admissions area and she was transferred to the gynaecology ward at about 4pm for further assessment, it added.
“She was assessed by a medical intern later in the evening and subsequently reviewed and counselled by a senior doctor once an emergency case requiring immediate clinical intervention had been concluded.”
It added that the patient and her husband were advised on follow-up care and instructed to return should her condition deteriorate.
While acknowledging that prolonged waiting times can be distressing, the department said public hospitals operated within a triage-based system, particularly in emergency and admissions units.
“This may result in unavoidable delays for patients whose conditions are assessed as stable at the time of presentation,” it said, adding that fluctuating patient volumes and emergency cases can place additional pressure on available staff.
It noted that the hospital had since also conducted a follow-up with the patient and that its management was reviewing the incident as part of quality-improvement efforts, including strengthening patient flow management, improving communication around waiting times, reinforcing triage and escalation protocols, and ensuring that cases where patients wished to leave before senior clinical review were appropriately escalated.
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Floundering Rahima Moosa Hospital ‘needs to admit it has a crisis’