Only in South Africa . . .

A guy I work with has a friend who suffered a stroke around about midnight on Tuesday night. The wife immediately phoned for an ambulance only to be told the ambulances were all busy. Eventually about 2 and a half hours later an ambulance finally arrived and took the guy to the Milpark hospital but they were told there were no beds in Trauma or High Care so they drove him off to Morningside clinic where he was admitted. An hour later - 6 hours after the first phone call - the distraught wife finally gets a phone call and is told that her husband has tested negative for Covid-19.

"Ummm . . . thanks", she says, "but what about the stroke?"

There's a silence on the other end of the line and then the question . . . "Stroke? He had a stroke?"

I'm glad to say he recovered and is stable but no thanks to our medical institutions.

There are private hospitals in SA that still  operate properly - Government hospitals are an advance stage before funeral parlors.     There are still some good medical practitioners around - but they avoid  government service like a plague that it became.   

What you describe is just an example opf daily life in medical services.        .    

Lol

As I've mentioned previously, my company has been putting O2 systems into hospitals during Covid.

Of the brand new systems we've installed since May last year...5 of them have been mis-used and damaged by staff, to the point of being non-operational. 

These are self operating systems where all you have to do is change the O2 cylinders when an alarm panel tells you to. 

In one case staff members themselves cut out and stole the copper piping. In another they somehow managed to rip a huge manifold off of the wall. These are manifolds fixed with 12mm rollbolts every 300mm. 

Of course, not In a single case does anybody know exactly who was responsible for the damage. And, from speaking to people at the hospitals, people have died as a result of needing Oxygen while the supply systems have been down.

But you better know that the hospital manager turns up,when she feels like it, in a Range Rover, to rural Madwaleni Hospital. 

In summary, of the hundreds of O2 fitted hospital beds my company has helped add to the fight against the pandemic, hardly any are operational. 

Now, what type if care do you think these patients are getting?