The intensive care unit (ICU) at Durban’s King Edward VIII Hospital, South Africa’s second largest, was shut down on Saturday.
This was after striking workers reportedly threatened nurses at the unit with knobkerries and whips.
Late on Saturday afternoon family members were looking after relatives in the hospitals — changing their dressings and emptying their bedpans.
A doctor who spoke on condition of anonymity said he believed it was the first time in the hospital’s history that the ICU had been forced to close.
Doctors were awaiting ambulances to transfer critically ill patients to other hospitals.
KwaZulu-Natal Health Department spokesperson Zebe Zwane said: ”Arrangements are being made for critically ill patients to be moved to other institutions, especially children.”
”The situation is challenging,” she said.
Another doctor, who also wished to remain anonymous, said that a group of striking workers ”invaded” the hospital’s ICU at about 12pm.
”It was mostly general assistants and orderlies. All the nurses were here … they were willing to work. This is absolutely ridiculous,” he said.
”We got families caring for patients, they [the nurses] were just pulled out of the ICU,” he added.
A 53-year-old woman on a ventilator was being attended to by her two daughters and son-in-law. The daughter, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said her mother had suffered an emergency hernia and had been transferred from the McCords Hospital a week earlier.
”They [McCords] said they had higher care here. So much for that. We heard that they came in with knobkerries and whips. When we got here today she was unattended. We had to change her -‒ you can’t expect the doctors to do that,” she said.
In a bed opposite, a 31-year-old man who had suffered a near fatal stab wound to his heart was being watched over by his mother and girlfriend.
Next to him was a 30-year-old man on a ventilator who had been admitted with renal and respiratory problems the previous week.
His mother had described the care prior to the incident as ”excellent”.
”We were aware of the situation but we did not know it was like this. We were informed the skeleton staff were taken out, it was really shocking.”
She was also concerned that her son may have missed out on taking his medication.
She rounded on the government, saying it was ”also to blame” because it did not have ”a listening ear”.
”The money is there, it is just being used wrongly, they should give the MPs 6,5% and the workers 57%.”
South African MPs were given pay increases of between 30% and 57% while the government offered its public servants 6%. Public-sector workers resorted to industrial action after the government refused to budge on its offer.
Private ambulance services, Netcare 911 and ER24, transported seven babies that were in King Edward’s neo-natal ICU unit to various private hospitals across the city.
Netcare 911 spokesperson Chris Botha said they were also taking patients out of the general ICU wards to various hospitals. – Sapa