We are soft targets, say hospital workers
They believe that the source of the babies’ infection is the milk formula, which is mixed in another unit. The babies died of diarrhoea while in the paediatric ICU.
‘We believe that we are soft targets for the department,’ said one of the health workers, who declined to be named.
‘But some babies who were not in the ICU but were also given formula milk got diarrhoea. About five babies who were in Ward 184 with their mothers got diarrhoea and were then admitted to ICU. Another baby who had been discharged also got diarrhoea and was treated in casulty.’
Another health worker said that the working conditions in ICU were not conducive to giving the babies proper care: ‘There are supposed to be three babies per nurse in the paediatric ICU but we usually have to look after about five babies each. Then there are new admissions to be taken care of. These are usually premature babies who have just been born and who need to be ventilated or need oxygen.’
Health workers also pointed out that they worked 12-hour shifts, and that, with long hours and overcrowding, ‘mistakes will happen’.
Meanwhile, Gauteng Health MEC Qedani Mahlangu conceded that the ICU ward where the babies were being cared for was ‘overcrowded’, with 15 more babies than the 35 allowed. The hospital has since moved some babies to another ward.
Meanwhile, Hospital CEO Barney Selebano announced that the diarrhoea was caused by a norovirus, one of the most common causes of gastro-intestinal infections.
The highly infectious norovirus is usually spread either via direct contact from an infected person or through contaminated water and food.
It is often caused when a person gets the virus from faeces and then does not wash their hands properly.
The Gauteng Health Department says that the investigation into the babies’ deaths will be completed by the end of the month.
Author
-
Kerry Cullinan is the Managing Editor at Health-e News Service. Follow her on Twitter @kerrycullinan11
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Unless otherwise noted, you can republish our articles for free under a Creative Commons license. Here’s what you need to know:
-
You have to credit Health-e News. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication.” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by Health-e News.” You must link the word “Health-e News” to the original URL of the story.
-
You must include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up link.
-
If you use canonical metadata, please use the Health-e News URL. For more information about canonical metadata, click here.
-
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week”)
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. Health-e News understands that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarise or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
-
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. You can find us on Twitter @HealthENews, Instagram @healthenews, and Facebook Health-e News Service.
You can grab HTML code for our stories easily. Click on the Creative Commons logo on our stories. You’ll find it with the other share buttons.
If you have any other questions, contact info@health-e.org.za.
We are soft targets, say hospital workers
by Kerry Cullinan, Health-e News
May 21, 2010