The Sunday News
. . . finds help in South Africa
AFTER having spent a month stuck at the United Bulawayo Hospitals (UBH) with little assistance from the staff there following a road traffic accident, a woman from Masvingo forced the hospital staff to discharge her and she flew to South Africa with her broken thigh bones for medical assistance.
The woman, however, feels the hospital staff wanted her dead as they offered no help during her time of need.
Ms Naume Mushiringi (49) was admitted to the hospital on 25 November 2014 after being involved in a bus accident the previous day in Beitbridge when a Mandaza cross-border bus rammed into a stationary haulage truck, injuring 40 people and killing two.
She was initially admitted to Beitbridge Hospital but was transferred to UBH for specialised treatment. According to UBH, she suffered a right supracondylar femur fracture and a left intercondylar femur fracture whereby both her legs were broken severely. While admitted to the hospital she was only offered pain killing drugs and doctors promised to operate on her legs to correct the fracture but the operation date never came to pass. She was told on several occasions that she would be operated on but it never materialised.
Sunday News managed to get hold of Ms Mushiringi in Pretoria, South Africa, where she has been receiving treatment since last year. She, however, says she felt she was denied her constitutional right to emergency medical treatment by UBH.
“UBH yakandikanganisira, they wanted me to die because they were not giving me medical attention. How can a patient be detained like that in a hospital with no treatment at all?” she questioned.
She told Sunday News that she had since received treatment from South African doctors and was now able to walk.
“I travelled to South Africa on 28 December 2014 and I went straight to a hospital in Pretoria where I was received well. I was admitted and treatment started thereafter,” she said.
Ms Mushiringi said when she was in Zimbabwe she was told she needed surgery to try and correct the injuries she had and although the hospital failed to conduct the operation due to a lack of resources, she was referred to a surgery that demanded more than $10 000.
She could not afford the procedure and decided to move to South Africa for assistance. However, doctors in South Africa initially said they could not perform an operation as it was too late.
“When I arrived they said I had stayed too long without being operated on and it was going to cause complications if they performed it. They said it was going to be very painful to operate at that stage so they opted for weights to try and correct the injury,” she said.
She said she was put on weights for two weeks as the legs were severely bent. After a slight improvement, doctors put both legs under plaster to ensure the fracture was corrected. Ms Mushiringi said she endured a torrid time with both legs cast in plaster.
“I had a hard time. I could not move as the plasters where thigh high covering all my legs so I was just grounded and the plaster was very heavy,” she explained.
Ms Mushiringi spent the next four weeks in plasters which were removed in February this year and has been going for physiotherapy and she said she felt like a baby as she was learning to walk all over again.
She said her doctors in Pretoria were anticipating that in September she would have fully recovered from her injuries and be able to come back to Zimbabwe.
Ms Mushiringi made headlines in the Sunday News when she demanded to be discharged after spending four weeks at UBH without being operated on.
Initially, she received a clearance letter from the hospital on 12 December 2014, allowing her to travel on an Air Zimbabwe passenger flight to South Africa to seek treatment.
However, after having booked the flight, relatives of the woman were barred by hospital officials from collecting her and a letter disowning the woman’s initial clearance was sent to Air Zimbabwe which then cancelled her booking.
The hospital’s defence was that the authority had been wrongfully given by a junior doctor who had not consulted his superiors to discharge the patient.
The hospital said they recommended that the patient be transported via an air ambulance that was well equipped and manned or via a road ambulance, but the relatives decided otherwise as they could not afford the air ambulance.
A sister to Ms Mushiringi, Mrs Rebecca Dzvene, revealed that Mandaza Bus Company was mum on issues to do with compensation.
“Mandaza Bus Company has not given us any assistance so far. We have paid all hospital fees and they have not compensated us. We are just waiting to see if they will take any action,” she said.
