Eastern Cape hospital report 'reads like a horror story'

While authorities blamed deadly tap water for the spate of deaths, a damning report from the national Health Department – kept under wraps for months by former minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang - was released this week.

A hospital implicated in a healthcare scandal that saw 140 Eastern Cape babies lose their lives charged mothers R30 to sleep on the floor alongside their sick children.

This is one of the shocking details unveiled in a just-released report by a task team of child-health experts appointed to probe the deaths, reported in nine hospitals in the Ukhahlamba district during the first three months of 2008.

The task team of three specialists found no evidence of any outbreak of disease and conclude that the babies died because they were born in one of the country's poorest districts and received poor healthcare. (click on image to enlarge)

The team paid special attention to the children's ward in the district's Empilisweni Hospital, where child deaths were among the highest in the area.

This is where they found that mothers had to pay R30 to stay with their ill children - "expected to sleep on the floor next to their child's bed as no accommodation is provided for them".

Basic medical and nursing standards and practices in the children's ward were found to be poor and infection control measures "limited".

Preparation of infant feeds did not comply with accepted practice and there was limited access to oral rehydration solution for babies being treated for gastroenteritis.

The task team found that although staff numbers were "reasonable", of 13 nurses on the ward, only three were permanent, making it difficult to develop consistent treatment practices. There was also minimal equipment in the ward.

Broader healthcare problems in the area included non-compliance with treatment protocols, inadequate facilities, insufficient staff training and low staff numbers, poor nursing standards, slack procurement procedures and an apparent disregard for the maintenance of accurate medical records.

Democratic Alliance MP Mike Waters, who threatened legal measures to get the report released, said it was "simply inexcusable" that the situation in some of the hospitals was allowed to "persist unchecked".

He thanked Hogan for releasing the report and called on her to ensure that "this tragedy is never repeated".

IFP health spokesperson Ruth Rabinowitz, a trained medical doctor, said the report "reads like a horror story".

"The nurses have behaved in a way that shows they're failing to implement their training. It is mind-boggling that they did not record the patients' weights, HIV and nutritional status," she said.

(click on image to enlarge)

Rabinowitz suggested that all the entities responsible for maintaining professional healthcare standards in the country should be held accountable, adding that a class-action lawsuit may well be filed against the hospitals involved.

She noted that gastroenteritis was "one of the oldest and most common" childhood ailments and it was "ludicrous" that staff were only now, after the problems were exposed, being trained in basic hygiene.

Child-care experts blast hospital in damning report