The manner in which a 52-year-old man, Sadek Ebrahim died has shocked a lot of people across social media – he reportedly died after a maggot infestation in the mouth.
The deceased who was a patient at RK Khan Hospital in Chatsworth, South of Durban, had suffered a major stroke in 2014, which left him unable to move and talk. He died on Wednesday after he was admitted at the public hospital on June 19.
South Africa’s department of health are now calling for an investigation into his death, which was as a result of maggot infestation in the mouth.
Speaking to Timeslive, Sadek’s son Azaad, said his father’s death could have been avoided.
“We initially took him to RK Khan on May 14 after a sore, about the size of a R2 coin, had formed near his ankle and we saw maggots coming out of it. We waited from 1pm to about 9:30pm before he was treated. The stench from the wound was unreal.”
“When we eventually saw the surgeon he cleaned up my father’s ankle to the extent that there was an open wound and you could see the bone. They sent us home and told us everything should be fine.”
“On June 19 we took him back to the hospital because his leg had turned black – we knew that they were going to need to amputate his leg. The doctors told us that because of his poor health, he would have a 50% chance of surviving the operation.
“When I got to the hospital on June 23 after his operation, the night before I saw a bunch of doctors standing outside his room – he had been isolated in his own room. They told me he had survived the operation but now had a 80/20 chance of survival.”
“My uncle and I were feeding him and I saw that his upper lip was swollen. When I looked inside his mouth that’s when I saw all those maggots inside his mouth – I completely lost it.
“When I came back inside after about 30 minutes I saw that the nursing staff had still not attended to my father and cleaned him. How can a human being be treated like that? That was my father, his pride was dragged through the mud.”
“I know [public hospitals] are overcrowded and have a lot of patients to deal with, but how can someone not notice that? The man could not talk or ask for help, should he have not received a little more care?”
Azaad who was spotted in the video, shouting and calling for hospital authorities to account for what they had found, revealed that he had a meeting with the hospital CEO Dr Prakash Subban on Monday and questioned him about the maggots. “I asked him why there were maggots in my father’s mouth, he couldn’t answer me.”
Dr Subban on Friday confirmed his meeting with Azaad. He said;
“I listened to him and it’s not that I couldn’t provide him with answers, it’s just that we needed to have conducted our own investigations into the matter, I could not speak off the cuff. We have conducted our own preliminary investigation and the department are conducting their own.”
Watch the video below,
