Thandi Skade
Keneiloe Makhathini is on the verge of cracking up. Five weeks after her sister, Heminah “Thami” Bilikwane, 30, and her baby died during child birth at Chris Hani-Baragwanath Academic Hospital, she is still no closer to finding out what happened.
Two weeks ago, she applied for access to Bilikwane’s medical file, which she later discovered had gone missing. She was initially told that the post-mortem results were contained in the file.
While the file was “miraculously found” yesterday, hospital spokesman Nkosiyethu Mazibuko told Makhathini they were unable to say what caused the deaths as they were still waiting for the postmortem. But four weeks ago, hospital CEO Johanna More confirmed to The Star that the post-mortem had been concluded on April 6.
“I’m still emotional. I’m actually on the verge of cracking. I really don’t get it.
“At the end of the day, the kind of attitude I’m getting from the hospital is like ‘so what, she’s dead’. But it’s two lives – we’re talking about human beings here,” she said.
Ten months pregnant, Bilikwane was admitted to the hospital on March 28 for what her family believed was supposed to be a caesarean birth. She was allegedly referred to Bara from Lilian Ngoyi Community Health Centre because the baby was too big to deliver naturally.
Her family believe medical staff acted negligently by inducing natural labour.
Makhathini said doctors tried to remove the baby with a “vacuum” three times, after she got stuck halfway through delivery, but she later died.
According to the hospital’s request for a post-mortem, written by obstetrics and gynaecology department clinical head Dr Eckhart Buchmann, Bilikwane became “confused and restless”, started bleeding and suffered cardiac arrest.
An investigation into the deaths was launched, but Mazibuko was unable to confirm its status.
Makhathini is not alone in her struggle to obtain answers from state hospitals following allegations of negligence.
Yasser Marere and his wife Merjury Muchemei have lost hope that they will ever find out what led to the death of their son at Rahima Moosa Mother and Child Hospital shortly after childbirth in November 2009.
When Muchemei was 5cm dilated, doctors noticed that the baby was coming out face first and not head first, compromising the baby’s natural birth and forcing doctors to perform an emergency caesarean.
But a private hospital gynaecologist who treated Muchemei six days after the birth told The Star hospital administrators had a case to answer to because Muchemei’s body frame was too small and the baby too large to deliver naturally – which he said the doctor should have known.
A brief preliminary report from an investigation ordered by then Gauteng health MEC Qedani Mahlangu in 2009 did little to satisfy the couple’s many unanswered questions.
“The report was brief and dissatisfying. We still have unanswered questions, but pursuing it is too emotionally and mentally taxing, and it opens old wounds we would rather not think about,” Marere said.
Almost two years later, and Palesa Mzangwa is also still waiting for answers. Mzangwa’s baby suffocated in his own stool inside her womb while nurses at KwaThema Clinic rudely told her to stop irritating them as they were on their lunch break.
An independent probe was concluded in December 2009, but details of the report haven’t been shared with the family.