A Phoenix resident, Constantia Junior Govender is calling out Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Hospital for negligence after she was allegedly declared dead by doctors at the government healthcare facility only to later wake up in a ‘freezer’ at the Phoenix mortuary in early April.
Govender, 52, of Clayfield said she was on her way to a friend’s house when she blacked out on the road and woke up at the Phoenix mortuary “feeling cold, naked and covered with a sheet from a corpse bed”.
“I usually go to Gandhi Hospital for my health check up every month but on that particular day I was on my way to visit a friend. I had been walking on the pavement in the vicinity of the Phoenix Mortuary around 1pm on a Thursday when I blacked out. I don’t really know what happened to me, who attended to me or transported me to hospital – I only remember waking up in the mortuary,” said the 52-year-old
She said: “I had no idea that I had been pronounced dead and woke up feeling very cold from the hard surface that I was laying on with my body covered and ready to be ‘processed’. I pulled the sheet from over my head and when I pulled it further down, I realised that I had no clothes on.”
Govender said she was panicked at the sight and saw that on her right hand side, a little further away from her, there was a body bag and next to that another dead person who was covered with a sheet.
“The room was quite dark, I woke up from the corpse bed and wrapped myself up with the sheet that was used to cover me up. The deceased person and the body bag confirmed that I was at a mortuary. I was a bit disturbed by this and said to myself, I need to get out from here. I didn’t have my phone with me so I started screaming as loud as I could but nobody came to my aid. I banged on the metal door and still couldn’t get anyone’s attention. I then took the corpse bed and started banging the door with it and I began to hear a sound of a walkie talkie and someone’s voice towards the room.”
Govender said that a group of mortuary workers eventually came to her aid and wheeled her out of the cold room. “I was taken to the casualty ward at Mahatma Gandhi Hospital where I was seen to by a doctor. I received royal treatment when they realised they had made a mistake. I asked the doctor why I was pronounced dead when I was clearly still alive. She responded by saying ‘When you were brought in, you had no pulse, we had you on oxygen and you flatlined on us three times. We tried to resuscitate you but failed.’ The doctor further said to me that, I was not the first person that this has happened to, it has happened to other people as well. When such cases happen, it begs the question if the hospital’s machines are in working order and if their oxygen tanks are full?” said Govender.
The mother-of-one said she asked the doctor how long after she was pronounced dead, did they call for a mortuary van and was told that it was about 45 minutes later.
“I told her that it was hard for me to believe because I’m a patient at this hospital for years and have seen things happen right before my eyes at this hospital. When someone has been declared deceased they immediately page for a mortuary van so what made them wait for 45 minutes before they called for a van to fetch me. When a patient has been declared dead in hospital, no other patient would want a dead body lying next to them for that long and this is why I disputed what the doctor was telling me. When I requested to see my chart so that I could see what treatment was issued to me and for how long I was on the machine, suddenly they couldn’t find my chart. This is very disturbing and traumatising because I wouldn’t have survived this had I been put inside a body bag as it is zipped from the outside,” said the traumatised elderly woman.
Govender said that she feels the hospital was negligent and refuses to take responsibility for what happened to her. “To date, I haven’t received any answers from the hospital, no one wants to hear me out. The PRO is never at his office, I tried to reach out to him several times and all attempts have been fruitless. I’m being pushed from pillar to post and the hospital is blatantly refusing to take full responsibility. Basically all I hear is excuses upon excuses. Many people have died at this hospital through negligence and yet they still refuse to change their ways and do things differently. I wonder how many other people have went through this traumatising experience and were not able to make it out alive,” added Govender.
The Phoenix Tabloid did reach out to the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Health regarding this incident and was informed that they will be investigating the matter and will officially respond thereafter.
