A diabetic domestic worker (59) who was admitted to Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital for a toe removal, is now wheelchair bound and unemployed after having her entire leg amputated without her consent.
During a harrowing two months at the facility, said Voilla Ncube, she was also subjected to abuse, starved and went for days without her wound being treated.
The Citizen reports that Ncube had initially visited a private clinic after her toe developed sores, linked to her diabetes. The clinic said the toe needed to be amputated to avoid a possible foot and leg infection, and recommended she go to Charlotte Maxeke, where she was admitted on 16 October.
However, after a two-week wait for surgery and without adequate care, her toe began to fester and infected the foot.
“The area above the painful toe turned black…but none of the nurses could tell me when the surgery would take place.”
Finally, someone arrived to prep her for the surgery. “I signed papers agreeing to have my foot cut off just after the ankle.”
She awoke in excruciating pain, and, she says, the wound “had not been stitched up properly”.
It was also never washed or dressed, she added.
She was given only paracetamol for pain, and when she slipped and fell in the bathroom – she had to hop on one leg as no crutches were available – a nurse slapped her.
The bad attitude from staff appeared to escalate, she said, when her employer’s daughter, Marina Barkley, called to complain about her mistreatment and that she was being given only paracetamol for her pain.
Then the untreated wound started to smell and ooze yellow pus. She was
operated on again, where more of her leg was amputated.
No wound care was administered after that, she said.
Ncube was then allocated to a room on her own, where, despite screaming from the pain, and begging for painkillers, she was ignored.
‘She should be thankful she’s alive’
The Citizen‘s inquiries to the Gauteng Department of Health went unanswered.
Email correspondence from between Barkley and Office of Health Standards Compliance (OHSC) deputy director Ntombi Ndukuya shows that no proper investigation was launched, nor was Ncube interviewed.
However, a later recorded meeting between hospital management, Ncube’s daughter and Barkley laid bare the problems at the hospital as staff shifted blame.
Surgeon Dr Ismail Cassimjee, who is also a lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand, said in the meeting that Ncube was mostly “disorientated and confused”.
He added that she should be thankful for leaving the hospital alive.
“I can assure you she was medically taken care of. She had multiple super specialists, I saw her every day in those two months.
“We should be thankful she came out alive. She developed acute kidney injury while in hospital,” Cassimjee said.
But doctors at South Rand Hospital, to where she was eventually transferred, conducted blood tests and found nothing wrong with her kidneys, said Barkley.
“They said her kidneys were healthy. Charlotte Maxeke staff just lied to us. What they did to her is evil,” she said.
Cassimjee said allegations that nurses and doctors did not attend to the patient were “part of her confusion”.
With pressure mounting from the Barkley family, the hospital transferred Ncube to South Rand Hospital in December, where staff were shocked by the untreated wound and immediately put her on a treatment regime, said Ncube.
“They also monitored my blood sugar level and blood pressure, which was never done at Charlotte Maxeke.
“South Rand nursed me back to health. Charlotte Maxeke took my whole leg instead of just one toe. My life is a misery … I won’t get my leg back. I can’t work anymore.”
Without crutches, she uses the wheelchair she got from Charlotte Maxeke during the transfer.
Nurses told her to return it if she “has no use for it”.
“They took my other leg, I only have one leg and they told me to return the wheelchair. How am I supposed to move around without my other leg?”
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