As striking workers at Dora Nginza Hospital returned to work on Monday, the Eastern Cape health department confirmed that several fatalities occurred during the strike but declined to provide further details.
Protesting staff left their posts at the Gqeberha hospital last week, leaving patients to fend for themselves.
The strike by nurses and porters paralysed health care at the facility, with anguished social media posts describing patients lying in pain and uncared for.
Video footage circulating online showed a patient lying — apparently dead — on the floor of a ward.
Another video showed protesters singing and dancing outside the building.
Eastern Cape health department head Rolene Wagner said the department would investigate the videos and allegations that a patient had died.
“We monitor adverse events every day because adverse events do occur in the healthcare setting.
“During that time, we did have a report of incidents of adverse events.
“Not every adverse event could be attributed to the strike, and so I don’t want to be citing numbers.
“I can talk to the principal about every adverse event that has occurred, which is being investigated to determine if it is linked to that delay.
“If that is the case, then obviously it has implications for those who are involved and contributed to it,” Wagner said.
The workers were barred from continuing their strike by a ruling of the labour court in Gqeberha on Friday.
The court granted an interim interdict in favour of Eastern Cape health MEC Ntandokazi Capa pending a full hearing on May 19.
According to Wagner, there were reportedly six break-ins at the Motherwell facility, with the most recent one taking place in March.
Criminals broke into the clinic and stole several computers and other equipment, causing damage to infrastructure and leaving staff traumatised.
As a result, some staff members indicated that they required counselling support before returning to night duty, while others reported sick for the day shift.
This led to patients being diverted to Dora Nginza Hospital and other clinics.
“What we can say is that there was unprotected action,” Wagner said.
“It is said to be related to a demand for additional overtime, blanket overtime across the entire facility, and it was also related to Motherwell CHC now putting pressure on Dora to try to absorb patients.
“It must be said that when Motherwell was closed ... we recognised that Dora and the surrounding facilities had to absorb the patients being referred.
“I gave permission to the district manager that we could use agency nurses at the Kwazakhele Day Hospital to assist them in that instance, and the doctors from Motherwell were deployed to Casualty at Dora Nginza Hospital.”
Wagner said it was not true that there were no staff attending to patients in wards during the strike.
“We really want to appreciate the management. They were often the only person available in the ward.
“All doctors were on duty, so the doctors had to carry the workload.
“The nurse managers were sometimes left alone looking after all of the patients. So, it was not ideal.”
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