Patient starved and denied medicine as punishment – Gauteng hospitals’ failures exposed

Health Ombud Professor Taole Mokoena. Picture: Supplied/GCIS Health Ombud Professor Taole Mokoena on Monday delivered a scathing briefing exposing systemic failures at two Gauteng hospitals. Staff at Dr George Mukhari Academic Hospital withheld medication and food from a psychiatric patient as punishment, falsified her medical records to hide it, and failed to reach her in time when she burned to death in a locked seclusion room.

Minister of Health Dr Aaron Motsoaledi said both institutions violated medicine’s most foundational principle, and one tried to cover it up. When healthcare workers qualify in South Africa, they are taught a principle that predates the Hippocratic oath:primum non nocere, first, do no harm. “When you interfere, the first thing you must put into mind is that I must not do harm to this particular patient.

That’s the principle which is taught around the whole world in every medical school and every nursing college. But in this case, it means that principle was thrown out of the window,” said Motsoaledi. He was speaking about two institutions, one public, one private, that the ombud found had caused harm to patients in their care.

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At Dr George Mukhari Academic Hospital, psychiatric patient Ms L. Mohlamme, 35, was punished by staff who withheld her medication and denied her food while she was held in seclusion.

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