Pretoria - Senior officials at Kalafong Hospital, west of Pretoria, have revealed how patients needing resuscitation have lost their lives because of a lack of ventilators.
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Over a weekend in October, 14 patients were admitted to the hospital, but its two ageing ventilators could not serve them all. And by Monday, only 11 were still alive.
”We had to decide which patients would use the ventilators. When we returned to work after the weekend, three of the patients had died. During that weekend, eight people died in the unit,” said Professor Mimi Geyser, a senior emergency physician at Kalafong and head of the accident and emergency unit.
Geyser also recalled a time when two male patients arrived bleeding profusely and having turned blue in the face due to a loss of blood.
Thereafter, a woman who suffered a pelvic fracture in a car accident was admitted, followed by another patient with multiple rib fractures and other injuries.
”Despite these emergencies, we had just one oxygen point feeding into two beds. I’ll never forget that day; it was very sad. Those two men died the same night,” she said.
On average, the hospital performs 10 resuscitations a day and about 300 a month. Its intensive care unit has eight beds, six for adult patients. ”In 2014 alone, we saw 49 200 patients in our unit.”
The professor painted a sorry state of the hospital which caters for thousands of people from Atteridgeville, Pretoria West, Olievenhoutbosch, as well as parts of Pretoria North and Centurion.
Last week, Kalafong received two new ventilators donated by the SA Medical and Education Foundation and Barloworld.
The machines will add to the two that had already exceeded their lifespan and were considered too risky to use, said Geyser.
”We constantly fear the machines are going to break down at critical moments, which they sometimes do,” she said.
Dr Elizabeth Dhlamini, who works in the unit, said ideally the hospital should have a separate intensive care unit for trauma and medical patients, each with 12 beds.
This would make life a lot easier, instead of the current eight beds for the whole unit shared by trauma and medical patients.
The doctor said it would be better if they had at least five ventilators in the unit.
”It’s very risky to run a unit like ours with ventilators that are old and unreliable. The lifespan of a ventilator is 10 years. But our two are much older than that.
”In our situation of having limited resources, we have no option but to use what we have,” Dhlamini said. ”At least we are guaranteed these two new machines will last for the next couple of years. We will still be using the old ones as well.”
Dhlamini said the limited resources forced them to make very difficult decisions of choosing which patients got the ventilator.
If a ventilator was available for two critical patients who both needed it, a doctor checked their condition and decided who was more likely to survive with the support the hospital would give them, she stated.
The patient who was unlikely to survive even with the ventilator, would receive it afterwards, limiting their chances of living.
Dianne Pols, director of the SA Medical and Education Foundation, said the impact the donation of ventilators would have on the patients was immense.
She said shortage of ventilators in accident and emergency units had resulted in loss of lives, which could otherwise have been avoided.
”It is therefore imperative to have lifesaving equipment in our State hospitals. With this donation, Kalafong will be able to save many more lives,” said Pols.
Steve Mabona, spokesman for Gauteng Health MEC Qedani Mahlangu, said there was an annual equipment plan, which included Kalafong Hospital, through which the department assessed where the machines were required desperately.
The department was aware of the desperate situation at the hospital, he said, but added the old ventilators were well maintained and still functional.
Mabona said there was a plan to increase the machines whenever a need arose. ”It is in our plans to procure more ventilators,” he said. ”We await delivery of two ventilators in January and plan to procure another 10 or so by May. However, this depends on commissioning additional ICU beds.”
Mahlangu had said it was the department’s priority to support all its facilities with the tools of trade and was on course to turn the tide.
A ventilator is a machine designed to mechanically move breathable air into and out of the lungs.
It provides the mechanism of breathing for a patient who is physically unable to breathe or breathing insufficiently. http://beta.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/gauteng/hospital-staff-forced-to-pick-who-will-live-1956199
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