Durban hospital responds after video captures long ER wait
A video has emerged online of patients apparently waiting for more than five hours at the Life Mount Edgecombe Hospital's trauma unit without anyone attending to them.
The video shows the matron of the hospital repeatedly saying she does not know where the doctor of the unit is.
Patients included a woman with an alleged ruptured appendix and another with a swollen head after a car accident.
Rivaaj Ramdas, who took the video, says he was told by the matron says to e-mail the hospital's management the next day because she couldn't at that hour.
"I said 'We need a doctor here immediately. I'm going to record you now and I'm going to put questions to you. Please tell me you cannot call anybody at this part of the night and there are no processes in place?' So if the hospital burns and a hundred patients die, no one gives a damn," he said.
Hospital Manager Graeme Kendall says patients in the emergency unit are classified and attended to according to how severe their condition is.
He says at that time a red code patient was being attended to.
See part of the video posted on Facebook below.