Residents have slammed Elsies River Day Hospital who they accuse of poor service and long waiting times, as some patients have to wait over 12 hours to be helped.
Community leader Claudine Coleridge says she got a distress call from a mother in Leonsdale whose seven-year-old son had a fit and they rushed the boy to the day hospital.
Claudine says: “We got there after 8pm and left before 3am the next morning without any medical assistance.
“While I was sitting there, people were making beds on the floor and lying on the benches.
“An old man sitting in a wheelchair was having a seizure of some sort and I begged them to see to the man. His wife stood next to his wheelchair and just cried, saying her husband will die tonight.”
Tracey Meyer complained that she waited the entire day on Friday, saying: “At 8am they did my observation but I only saw the doctor at 10pm when I got a packet of pain tablets and ibuprofen. We were hungry and still needed to walk home to Ruyterwacht and it’s so late and dangerous.”
Western Cape Health Department spokesperson, Monique Johnstone, claims the weekend of 6 January saw an increase in trauma cases at the Elsies River Community Health Centre, resulting in longer waiting times.
Johnstone says: “Since most emergency cases treated at the facility were triaged according to the South African triage scale as red, immediate attention was given to them by our healthcare team.
“Consequently, those whose conditions were triaged as stable and non-life-threatening, unfortunately, had to wait longer to receive care in comparison with the more serious and complex cases.”
Claudine and community leaders Steve Ross and Alaysha Meyer met with the hospital management and two members of the Elsies River Health Committee yesterday.
Claudine says: “There’s a language barrier between our people and the medical staff. Lots of issues were raised, but in a nutshell I strongly believe they’re in denial about what’s happening there.”