Incompetence and misplaced priorities are to blame for the death of a pregnant woman at Kopanong Provincial Hospital, the DA has said, slamming the facility’s “inadequate care of psychiatric patients” after Refilwe Thamae (26) was found hanged from a toilet door.
“The situation now is that people with a mental health condition are often placed in ordinary wards because the hospital has one psychiatric ward for male patients, which is full,” said DA spokesperson on health Jack Bloom.
The mother of the woman, who was seven months’ pregnant, said her daughter had showed signs of mental illness when an ambulance took her to Kopanong Hospital in Vereeniging last Thursday.
She had stayed at her daughter’s bedside until the Friday evening, reports News24.
“She begged me not to leave, but I told her that she needed help, that I would come back.”
But in the early hours of Saturday the police knocked on her door and said she was needed at the hospital. There, she was told her child had hanged herself with a scarf in one of the toilets.
“I was shocked. Refilwe was excited when she went past five months in her pregnancy. She had previously had two miscarriages. I cannot believe she took her life.”
Gauteng Health spokesperson Motalatale Modiba said Refilwe was admitted to a maternity ward where sedation and restraints were prescribed and applied.
“She was later nursed in a side ward because crying babies triggered her condition,” he said. When staff conducted midnight rounds, Refilwe was found hanging in the bathroom.
News24 article – Pregnant woman found hanging from hospital toilet door (Open access)
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