Online Reporter
THREE years ago, a South African hospital used makeshift cardboard plasters to treat patients with broken limbs and bone fractures.
This was confirmed by the DA’s Gauteng Shadow Health MEC Jack Bloom.
The makeshift plasters were used at the Thelle Mogoerane Regional Hospital in Vosloorus, east of Johannesburg.
“The hospital’s orthopaedic department sees about 100 patients a day, most of whom would usually require Plaster of Paris to assist their healing. Cardboard has sometimes been used to stabilise a broken limb,” told news24.com.
Last year, at Nampula Central Hospital, the largest health unit in the north of Mozambique, doctors in emergency orthopaedics and traumatology used wet cardboard to treat patients.
On July 12, Jorge Francisco walked down the corridor to the orthopaedics emergency room accompanied by his son, who had been run over by a motorbike three weeks earlier and suffered damage to the bone in his left leg.
“It’s the third week and we came to check,” Francisco said.
The check should have been on the condition of the leg and to reinforce it with more plaster, but the answer they got from the doctor was peremptory:
“He said the hospital doesn’t have any plaster,”
Without plaster for the cast at the hospital, Jorge thought of alternatives.
“I don’t know. I’m going to ask family members to see if I can buy more plaster to put it back on, because I’m not satisfied with it the way it is.”
At the Beira Central Hospital, there was greater concern at a four-fold increase in accidents compared to the previous year, leading to the exhaustion of the plaster supply for the entire year. — Club of Mozambique/H-Metro Reporter.
Mathew Masinge