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The ongoing Samantha Sungirai’s inquest is pointing to one thing — that her death was as a result of negligence. Sungirai bled to death after giving birth through a Caesarean section at Mpilo Central Hospital in March 2012.
The midwife Nonhlanhla Bhebhe who attended to Sungirai when she was admitted on the fateful day and Dr Alimon Maphosa who operated on her, are both agreed that Sungirai’s life could have been saved had the staff at the hospital acted professionally. Sungirai who was admitted at the hospital at 9AM, was only operated on at 5PM despite the fact that the admitting midwife, Bhebhe, had indicated that she was in bad condition and needed to be operated on urgently.
Dr Maphosa said had right measures been taken at the right time, Sungirai’s death could have been avoided. “I feel we could have done much better than what happened to save her. She was a good candidate for an urgent operation and her card was even written “C Section, start now” but her condition was not prioritised as suggested by the midwife and doctor,” said Dr Maphosa.
We do not want to pre-empt the findings of the inquest but there is no way the inquest can exonerate the staff at Mpilo who according to the evidence of Dr Maphosa and midwife Bhebhe, acted negligently leading to the death of Sungirai. There have been numerous cases when patients have complained of ill-treatment by health staff and authorities have in most of the cases defended their members of staff.
Sungirai’s case is a confirmation that many of the deaths at our hospitals could be avoided if the health workers act professionally. We want at this juncture to remind the nurses and doctors of the professional creed they signed on their graduation day. Doctors and nurses should not forget that they made a vow that they would do all within their powers to save lives and they can only be able to do so by acting professionally.
Mpilo Central Hospital and the rest of health institutions, we want to believe, do a postmortem of each death recorded at their respective institutions with the view of finding any shortcomings. We want to commend Dr Maphosa and midwife Bhebhe for being honest when they gave evidence before the inquest. The information they gave should be very useful to authorities at Mpilo and other health institutions.
There is definitely a need to change the way cases needing urgent attention are handled. Mpilo hospital by now should have conducted its own investigations with a view to finding out who “slept on the job” resulting in the delay in attending to Sungirai who was bleeding from the womb.
It is important for all health staff to appreciate the critical role played by health institutions in saving lives. Hospitals can only succeed in saving lives if those employed at the institutions are dedicated and committed professionals. We want to once again implore health institutions authorities to put in place measures to improve service delivery in order to restore that lost public confidence and trust.
Online Reporter