A Kraaifontein woman says she wants to raise the alarm after a doctor at Tygerberg Hospital allegedly refused to help her after someone threw a brick through her car window while she was driving.
Mom of two, Shirley Fortune, 40, says the incident happened on Monday and she got a helse skrik when the baksteen came flying through the window and hit her in the neck.
“My husband and I had dropped someone off in Ravensmead, and as we were driving past Leonsdale [in Elsies River] a brick was thrown at our car.
“It hit my side and my neck. We didn’t stop immediately, we stopped at the BP garage in Connaught Road and from there went to the nearest hospital, which was Tygerberg,” Shirley explains.
Upon arrival at the trauma unit, she says security officers were already rude and refused her husband entry.
Shirley was hit by a baksteen while travelling in her car
In shock and pain, with blood dripping from her injured neck, the couple were told by the guards to speak to a female doctor seated at the reception desk.
“It was 11.10pm and we approached this female doctor. She had no name tag and my husband asked her if she could please assist me. I was walking with my hand against the left side of my neck as it was still bleeding.”
What she was about to hear shocked her even more.
“She told my husband, ‘well, your wife is alive, walking and talking. She’s not dying. We don’t do walk-ins. We only do referrals and patients brought in by ambulance. If she wants to sit, she will wait three days to be helped’. I was furious,” Shirley says.
Shirley says she is a former employee at Tygerberg Hospital and was shocked by the lack of service she received.
“I am a former senior administrative clerk of Tygerberg, I stopped working there in 2011. To get this treatment is wrong and unfair. I didn’t know how bad my wound was, but I had glass in my ear, in my hair and all over.
“They could have seen me and referred me to another hospital, but they didn’t.”
SHATTERED: Car damage
Shirley was eventually helped at Kraaifontein Hospital and says she now suffers from severe pain in her head, neck, back and shoulders.
Following a Daily Voice enquiry, Western Cape Health Department spokesman, Mark van der Heever, said they will be launching an investigation into the incident.
“We apologise to the patient for the negative experience she had at Tygerberg Hospital. The incident has been brought to the attention of the hospital management who will be looking into it.”
He added that injured people arriving at Emergency Centres “who are in visible need of medical care cannot be refused or turned away”.
“They should be triaged according to medical emergency and patients with life-threatening conditions and injuries (triaged red) are seen first.”