Patient soils herself in moving ambulance as emergency staff refuse to stop

A 43-year-old patient had no choice but to soil herself when medical assistants refused to stop the ambulance, so that she could relieve herself with dignity.

A resident of Matswale location in Musina, Ms Egnes Ndou, was being transported to Polokwane Hospital for medical reasons on 30 March. Just after the Baobab tollgate, she informed the five officials that she was experiencing stomach aches. She requested them to stop, so that she could relieve herself.

“They told me that it was not safe for an ambulance to stop by the roadside or at a cafe or filling stations, where toilets were available,” she told Limpopo Mirror on Tuesday. “They started shouting at me when I insisted. They told me that, if I had told my gang to attack them on the way, it was not going to work.”

“I was told to relieve myself right inside the moving ambulance,” she said.

Ndou tried to hold herself together, but the pressure was too much for her. So she soiled herself. “The officials sprayed perfume in the air and swore at me, using unimaginable, vulgar names,” she said.

A female nurse shouted that she should have brought plastic shopping bags if she knew she would need to use a toilet. They allegedly told her that she could then have thrown the plastic bag out of the window.

When she arrived at Polokwane Hospital, she visited the toilets, where she rinsed her skirts with water inside the toilet bowl. She then put on the same, wet skirts. She found an empty two-litre bottle outside, filled it with water and washed herself by pouring some water over her body.

“But when I sat among other patients in the hospital, they closed their noses with their hands and moved away from me,” she recounted her ordeal. “Some even pointed at me and said that I smelt of excrement.”

Ndou complained about her predicament to a doctor who helped her in the Polokwane Hospital. The doctor got very upset about the alleged conduct and phoned the senior officials at Musina Hospital. “He told them to fully investigate my case, because what the nurses did to me was horrible and unimaginable,” Ndou said.

After the consultation, Ndou refused to use the hospital transport for the journey back home. “I used a taxi, where I explained to the driver and other patients that I had a running stomach,” she said. “All the people inside the taxi understood my case. I knew that if I were to use the ambulance, I was going to suffer more.”

Ndou had lodged a complaint with the office of the chief executive officer at the Musina Hospital, where the office acknowledged receipt of her complaint on 7 April.

Limpopo Mirror sent a media inquiry to the spokesperson for the Department of Health, Mr Macks Lesufi, who also acknowledged receipt of the media inquiry and promised to respond as soon as possible.

News - Date: 30 April 2015

Tshifhiwa Mukwevho

Tshifhiwa Given Mukwevho was born in 1984 in Madombidzha village, not far from Louis Trichardt in the Limpopo Province. After submitting articles for roughly a year for Limpopo Mirror's youth supplement, Makoya, he started writing for the main newspaper. He is a prolific writer who published his first book, titled A Traumatic Revenge in 2011. It focusses on life on the street and how to survive amidst poverty. His second book titled The Violent Gestures of Life was published in 2014.

Email: [email protected]