By Theodorah Mawasha
GA-MATIPANE-The Emergency Medical Services (EMS) in Kgapane hospital under the Greater Letaba Municipality, are in hot waters for negligence and delayed response. This comes after a man from Ga-Matipane village, died on 03 January, while waiting for an ambulance to take him to hospital.
Speaking to Tzaneen Voice, a friend of the deceased, Jeffrey Senyolo, who contacted the hospital, said that this was not the first time he had a bad experience with EMS, nor the hospital reception personnel, that are responsible for booking and dispatching ambulances.
“I have been in contact with the hospital reception requesting ambulances on multiple occasions. We are always muscle-flexing because of the back and forth of phone calls, checking if the ambulance is on the way or not, it’s frustrating. On one occasion, the ambulance took hours to come until I drove the family member to the hospital myself “.Senyolo said
“On this occasion, I, unfortunately, lost the friend. After I made several phone calls, I eventually stopped because the hospital receptionist was getting irritated with me. We lost the deceased in the morning of the next day because we feared touching him and taking him to the hospital ourselves in case, we caused further damage to his injuries “. He said
Tzaneen Voice contacted Kgapane hospital communications officer, Ivy Modiba, who referred us to Neil Shikwambana, the Provincial spokesperson for the Department of Health in Limpopo.
” We take such matters seriously, however, our investigation might take a while. High demand might be the reason for this particular incident. When there is a high demand, people are advised to escalate to station managers. Again, we advise people to use emergency numbers to get a quicker response “. He said.
In case of an emergency, call the toll-free number 101777.
