Sipokazi Maposa
24 November 2009
A Table View woman has lodged a complaint with the provincial Health Department against Somerset Hospital, in which she accuses staff of telling her to mop up her blood after she suffered a miscarriage.
Lauren Bester, 27, claims that she was also forced to carry the body of her miscarried foetus in her bag for five hours after staff refused to dispose of it as medical waste.
Bester, who miscarried her baby on Sunday, claims that nurses told her that they were too busy when she asked them to help clean and take the foetus away.
Bester said the situation was so dire that she was only given a drip after she asked for it.
The mother of two, who was almost three months pregnant, said she had arrived bleeding at Somerset Hospital just after 8am.
After sitting for about two hours in the waiting room she finally lost the baby.
"I was in a lot of pain. I was still standing when I felt the foetus dropping on the floor.
"When I asked other nurses to come and help me in the room, they said they were too busy with other patients and had no time to deal with me. I was screaming for an hour in that room when a nurse finally came in."
She said it took a further four hours for a gynaecologist to arrive and took at least eight hours for her to be admitted into a ward.
But what irked Bester the most was the "lack of sensitivity" by staff. She said a nurse had refused to take the foetus. "She refused, saying it was not their responsibility to do that, and that I must take it home with me. I then wrapped it in my shirt and put it in my bag.
"It was only when my husband refused to take it into the car that I took it back to them. For five hours I carried this in my bag... they only disposed of it after I got admitted after 5pm," she said.
She was discharged yesterday.
Provincial Health Department spokeswoman for regional hospitals Myliesha Wakefield said: "It seems as if there was a misunderstanding between what Bester requested and what the nurses understood."
She said the nurses were unaware that the foetus was wrapped in Bester's shirt and said that they could not throw away the clothing, although it was blood-stained. Wakefield confirmed that Bester had laid a complaint.
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