Home | News | DRUGGED PATIENT SODOMISED AT PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL

DRUGGED PATIENT SODOMISED AT PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL

12/01/2021 01:03:00 BY STANLEY KHUMALO

Font size:

MANZINI – A family claims that their relative, who was a patient at the National Psychiatric Referral Hospital, was allegedly sodomised while under medication.

The patient, *Mike (35), who suffers from epilepsy was admitted to the National Psychiatric Referral Hospital on December 28, 2020. The hospital is located at Two Sticks in Manzini, which is about four kilometres from the city centre.

According to *Nqobile, upon admission, her brother was injected with a sedative. She said when they left Mike at the medical facility, he was already drowsy. Nqobile said they came to check on his wellbeing on December 30, 2020.

During their visit, she said they noticed that he had difficulty walking as he was limping. This, she said, took them aback and they enquired from him what had happened.

Injected

She said Mike informed them that after being injected with the sedative, he was not isolated but was admitted to a ward with other patients. Nqobile said her brother narrated to them that he was informed that the isolation wards were full.

“He told us that after they injected him, they gave him a blanket and he slept with other patients,” Nqobile alleged.

However, when he woke up, Nqobile claimed, her brother informed them that he started to feel discomfort and challenges when walking. She supposed that whoever sodomised him had ample time to undress Mike and proceeded with the sodomy and dressed him up again.

Mike, Nqobile purported, had been scared to report what befell him to the nurses stationed at the ward as it was embarrassing to him.

She claimed that after being informed of what allegedly befell her brother, the family reported the allegations to the hospital’s medical staff and Mike was offered treatment to heal him from the alleged sexual violation.

“The challenge is that he was in and out of sleep and cannot say, as a matter of fact, which patient or patients sexually violated him,” she claimed.

Nqobile claimed that since they reported the matter to the hospital’s personnel, they had not received any feedback on action taken to date. She said they were now worried as they feared that this could befall him again.

The sedative, she said, was part of the medication Mike regularly took to control his ailment and due to the alleged sodomy; Nqobile said they were concerned it could become a regular occurrence. Furthermore, she said, the lack of information and care from the medical facility was worrying them.

Meanwhile, according to a source within the health facility, there were usually two nurses stationed in a ward per shift.

Breaks

However, due to the spat between the administration and the medical personnel, the nurses alternated during lunch breaks and this could have happened while one nurse was available.

The source said the challenge was that orderlies had since ceased offering assistance to nurses in the wards as they claimed that it was not in their job description, which they were paid for.

The source purported that this started happening in the early weeks of November when the Ministry of Health issued a memorandum informing personnel that they were no longer entitled to refreshments provided by the hospital’s kitchen.

The source said following that, a number of challenges had engulfed the hospital. Regarding the issue of sodomy among patients, the source said, it was a common occurrence as some patients were unruly such that they requested the nurses to inject patients with sedatives.

“Some of the patients make us suspicious of having ulterior motives as they at times shout that the patient should be offered an injection that would make them sleep,” the source said.

He said there was an injection that when administered made a patient sleep the whole night. The source said this injection was known as diazepam. The medication is available on prescription only.

Sleep

Meanwhile, the medical practitioner at the National Psychiatric Referral Hospital, said when injected with diazepam, it was possible to sleep a longer period when the body was not used to the drug. During this period, he said, anything could be done to that person who was sleeping. The source explained that in most instances, patients were scared to report sexual violation as they felt embarrassed and or were not aware of what happened while they were sedated.

“Also, because there are minimal nurses, more often, the patients are scared to report being sexually violated as the medical personnel are the ones who inject them and or hold them when they are violent.”

The source said it was hard to establish when a patient was raped or sodomised if the matter was not reported. He said in most instances, they learnt of their ordeals when a sexually transmitted infection (STI) surfaced.

Upon discovery that a patient had been raped or sodomised, the source said, nurses in the ward write an incident report, conduct an HIV test and then enrol that particular survivor in pre-exposure prophylaxis (or PrEP). This is a way for people who do not have HIV, but who are at very high risk of getting it to prevent the virus infection by taking a pill every day.

The pill, according to the Centres of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) contains two medicines (tenofovir and emtricitabine) that are used in combination with other medicines to treat HIV. The source said once the patient was enrolled in PrEP, they were also offered antibiotics to suppress any STIs.

Reported

Meanwhile, the Director of Health Services, Dr Vusi Magagula, said this incident was not reported to his office. However, he said the medical personnel at the hospital should have made sure that the patient was taken care of.

“There is a supervision team in the wards and such should be monitored,” he said.

When asked if this was not part of the grievance that had been advanced by nurses at the hospital, Dr Magagula said this could be a challenge.

He said when such an incident happened; it was reported to the ministry. Dr Magagula promised to follow up on the matter and when he was called at 5pm, he said: “I’ve contacted the matron and I understand she is consulting management and shall come back to me.”

When contacted at 7:16pm, his phone rang unanswered. Worth noting is that the incident, according to the family, was allegedly reported on December 30, 2020 to the hospital staff.

Recently, this publication reported that in a quest to get for food, a patient fled from the National Psychiatric Referral Hospital, only to be hit by a car and died on the spot. The patient was one of 42 hungry patients who had been subjected to longer spells without being served a meal at the psychiatric hospital.

*Not real names to conceal affected patients’ identities.