Gang steals 2 ambulances
18/06/2008 12:30 - (SA)


Johannesburg - Five armed men stole two ambulances in Umtata on Tuesday night, Eastern Cape police reported on Wednesday.

Superintendent Mike Fatyela said the gang held up security guards at the premises where the ambulances were kept.

"They held the guards at gunpoint and took two ambulances with the full medical kit inside," said Fatyela.

The ambulances belong to the local metro council. There are still other ambulances available to use for emergencies, said Fatyela.

The robbers are still at large.

How safe is your baby?
17 September 2007, 07:33
Related ArticlesBaby dies after getting HIV blood transfusion
Parents demand answers to HIV puzzle
'I knew there had been a f***-up'
Violet was forced to turn her five-month-old son's life support system off a week after she was told that he was HIV-positive - but no one has ever been able to tell the HIV-negative mother why.

Now, following research showing that at least 42 babies and children are suspected to have been accidentally infected with HIV in state hospitals, doctors are pointing the finger at the continued "largely inadequate infection control" that they believe is behind these unexplained infections and the four deaths that followed them.

In addition, at least six families from Cape Town (where 70 percent of the unexplained HIV cases have been found), Gauteng and Port Elizabeth are taking or considering legal action against the state for what they describe as the total violation of the "duty of care" government hospitals owed their children.

Research conducted by a group of Western Cape scientists and doctors and subsequent investigations by the Human Sciences Research Council and Treatment Action Campaign has painted a disturbing picture of HIV-infected expressed breast milk being given to premature babies, the re-use of dirty syringes and poor sterilisation of medical equipment in state hospitals.

In one case, five babies from a Western Cape hospital were infected with HIV after they were apparently given formula mixed with expressed breast milk from an HIV-positive woman. One of the infants later died.

But, despite the growing numbers of suspected "nosocomial" (hospital-based) HIV-infections being identified, the state has yet to support the establishment of a register of these cases - effectively tying the hands of the doctors and scientists who want to track the source of unexplained HIV infections.

The national health department has yet to respond to email queries, sent on Thursday last week, about the tracking of such cases.

Earlier this year, however, Western Cape health authorities reached an undisclosed out-of-court settlement with an HIV-negative Muslim couple whose baby daughter was believed to have been given infected breast milk while at the Mowbray Maternity hospital or Red Cross Children's hospital.

According to the TAC's research, this case "made it clear that HIV is indeed being transferred in hospital settings as a result of inadequate management and handling protocols".

Dr Shaheen Mehtar, an infection prevention and control expert, who helped investigate the case in which six Bulgarian medics were later found guilty by a Libyan court of infecting 400 children with HIV, believes the suspected accidental HIV infections that have been reported from local state hospitals are only "the tip of the iceberg".

"I'm sure it's happening all over the place … but even if it was only one case, it would be unacceptable. How dare you, as a hospital, give someone else's child HIV?"

Mehtar's belief that suspected nosocomial HIV-infections are the tragic result of patchy infection control measures is echoed by the TAC's research into such cases.

"The data obtained in this study … casts an even larger suspicion upon the state of infection control generally in the South African public health sector," the report concluded.

So why has it taken so long for parents to take legal action over their children's unexplained HIV infections?

Red Cross Children's hospital's Dr Brian Eley, who pioneered the first studies into the suspected accidental HIV infection of babies and children with Stellenbosch University Professor Mark Cotton, believes many of the parents of such children were often too afraid of the stigma around HIV to take legal action.

"They are very angry about what has happened … but they're also embarrassed by what other people will say," he said, after revealing that, since 2004 research found 14 unexplained HIV cases, Red Cross had treated another seven cases.

Violet confirmed Eley's opinion when the Cape Times spoke to her this weekend about her son's untimely death.

"I was afraid to speak about what happened. I was scared people who look at me and think I was the one who did this to my child."

Like many of the other HIV-infected babies whose parents were shown to be negative, Violet's baby was born premature, at 33 weeks, and was repeatedly fed with expressed breast milk.

It was not long before his health problems started to show. "His head was bigger than his body, he never had any baby fat and you could see his little ribs through his skin, but every day I would go to Tygerberg hospital and sit with him and would tell myself, 'he's going to make it, he's going to make it.'

"A week before he died, one of the doctors came to me and asked me if they can do an HIV-test on my baby and I said okay. The next day they told me that the test is positive and I must also go for a test. But I was negative."

Seven days later, Violet was asked to make a terrible decision.

"The doctors told me there is nothing more they can do for him and he will probably not live past midnight. So we decided to switch the machines off at six that night. I did not want my baby to suffer.

"My husband went crazy …he wasn't with the baby like I was because he had to work, and so he didn't see how he got sicker and sicker. He never expected this to happen ...

"The doctors asked me if I wanted counselling, but I was so hurt inside, I was cross with everybody … no one could tell me why my baby was gone."

'Witch' teachers set alight
05/09/2007 10:47 - (SA)

Johannesburg - Two women were burnt to death in what police believe was an attempt by pupils to rid a northern KwaZulu-Natal school of evil spirits, police said on Wednesday.

Police spokesperson Captain Jabulani Mdletshe said a huge group of youths had dragged the two 60-year-old women - Mangubane Msaba Zungu and Qibile Thabitha Thusi - from their home to a local sports field.

There, they doused them with petrol and set them alight.

Zungu died at the scene and Thusi later died at hospital.

Mdletshe said pupils from Manhlenga High School in Manguzi near Kosi Bay had started "acting strangely" since August 17.

"Many of the pupils started crying for no apparent reason. Some claimed they wanted meat during their crying," the captain explained.

They believed that an evil spirit had possessed them.

"There were apparently a few meetings held by the pupils to discuss the matter. At one of the meetings, it was allegedly suggested that two women may have bewitched the school," he said.

"We are investigating the pupils but no arrests have been made as yet. We will also be speaking to the school management," said Mdletshe.

Loo collapse nearly kills man
04/09/2007 09:12 - (SA)

Buks Viljoen, Beeld

Witbank - A mineworker is in a serious condition in Pretoria Academic Hospital after a toilet collapsed while he was sitting on it.

Koos de Beer, 29, suffered deep cuts to his right leg after the toilet bowl in his rented home broke into pieces underneath him.

To make matters worse, the incident happened on Thursday, his birthday.

He suffered cuts to his leg and buttocks when sharp pieces of the broken toilet bowl cut into his lower body.

He underwent emergency surgery on Friday. He has since undergone a second operation to suture the deep wounds to his right leg, and to have skin grafts, said his sister-in-law, Reinette de Beer.

Lying in a pool of blood

She said her sister, Antoinette, 30, was hysterical when she phoned her at about midnight to say Koos "had fallen".

"When I arrived, he was lying in a pool of blood in the toilet. I desperately tried to stop the blood pumping from the wound."

After trying three times to get hold of an ambulance, she and her sister-in-law put him into the back of her bakkie and rushed him to hospital.

"The sharp shards of the toilet severed the artery in his leg and he received several units of blood," said Reinette de Beer.

De Beer was transferred to Pretoria Academic Hospital.

"He is still weak and we don't know if he will regain the use of his leg," she said.

The couple have a five-year-old son, Jacques.

"He was severely traumatised by seeing his father in such a state," she said.

She said they were dumbfounded by the incident and didn't know what had caused the toilet bowl to break.

Quick! A broom! Manto’s coming!
Zine George and Lauren Cohen Published:Aug 12, 2007

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How the hospital at the centre of the storm did a quick spruce-up before the Health minister came visiting.

The hospital that sparked an outcry over baby deaths was given a dramatic facelift nine days before Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang arrived to give it an almost clean bill of health.

Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge cited her impromptu visit to Frere Hospital in East London as a key reason for her being sacked as deputy health minister. She described the situation at the hospital as a “national emergency” on July 13.

Her visit followed a damning exposé in the Daily Dispatch, which said 2000 babies had been stillborn at Frere in the past 14 years, according to the labour ward’s abortions and stillbirth book.

The newspaper said factors allegedly leading to the deaths of hundreds of newborn babies there included:

Severe staff shortages;

A lack of vital lifesaving equipment; and

Overworked staff.

Tshabalala-Msimang sent a team, including Professor Ronnie Green-Thompson and the national Health Department’s manager for hospital services, Dr Thabo Sibeko, on July 16 to investigate conditions at the hospital. Nine days later, Tshabalala-Msimang walked into Frere Hospital, which had been hastily refurbished, and rejected claims by the Daily Dispatch that babies had died because of equipment shortages. She conceded there were staff shortages and recommended a maintenance budget increase and the replacement of six incubators.

The Sunday Times yesterday established that medical equipment, beds and even new linen had been hastily shipped into the hospital before she arrived.

An equipment register at Frere’s obstetrics and gynaecology department lists several improvements to the labour ward and theatre. They include:

Three heart monitors;

Five CTG machines, used to monitor the heart rate of unborn babies;

Six mobile machines used to check blood pressure and heart rate in adults and infants;

Nine pumps used to supply and measure fluids given to patients via a drip; and

Thirty stainless-steel refuse bins and an extension to include five extra beds.

Hospital staff, who feared victimisation if they were identified, claimed this week that medical equipment, designer chairs, curtains, bedding and even pot plants had been removed from Bhisho Hospital and Cecilia Makhiwane Hospital in Mdantsane and taken to Frere.

A well-placed source at Cecilia Makhiwane said the hospital’s medical superintendent, Dr Nokuzola Ntshona, had been informed about the removal of CTG machines only this week.

“She was not aware, not until Wednesday. No one asked for her permission to remove the machines, so this was all done without authority,” said the source.

East London Hospital Complex chief executive Vuyo Mosana strongly denied that equipment had been moved from other hospitals or purchased just for the health minister’s visit.

He said: “We can’t deny that those CTG machines and other material did arrive at the section. But this was not in preparation for the minister’s visit ...

“These CTG machines were part of a national tender that was submitted earlier and they arrived some time before the minister arrived. Yes, indeed, they were put there [in the maternity ward] prior to her [Tshabalala-Msimang’s] visit, not necessarily to hide anything but because they were available.”

But staff painted a different picture: “All this stuff is new,” said a health worker, pointing to the chairs. “Staff had to put this here just before Manto’s visit. This is all an act.”

Frere’s old curtains were sky blue and blankets navy blue. “You see these lilac duvets, they are new. Frere does not use duvets but blankets. If you see anything pink or lilac here, you must know that it’s part of the stuff that was brought in to impress Manto and the task team,” said another health worker.

“You can ask any staff member here to describe to you how Frere was on the Friday the deputy minister was here and the Sunday that Manto was here. The deputy got to see the true Frere, while Manto saw a window-dressed Frere. What is of concern to us as nurses is that infants will continue to die while politicians continue to cover for each other.”

Another said: “There’s one reason why the deputy minister [Madlala-Routledge] told a different story from that of the minister [Tshabalala-Msimang] about conditions at Frere’s maternity ward.

“It’s simple ... we were instructed to prepare for Manto’s visit, while her deputy came unannounced.”

The Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa ’s Frere Hospital shop steward, Edward Maseti, said Madlala- Routledge was one of few officials to see the reality of the crisis at Frere. “We do not want people to claim things are normal when they are not. The President [Thabo Mbeki] should visit the parents whose babies died and tell them media reports about the crisis are false,” said Maseti.

Cecilia Makhiwane Hospital’s superintendent, Dr Ntshona, faces disciplinary action for writing to Mbeki, warning him that Tshabalala-Msimang had overlooked “serious deficiencies” at Frere Hospital.

Mosana said she had breached protocol by not approaching her immediate superiors first.

Daily Dispatch editor Phylicia Oppelt said the newspaper stood by its story.