Durban - The Department of Health has been ordered to admit a severely ill 11-year-old girl to a psychiatric facility after her mother made a desperate plea to the Durban High Court.
In her urgent application, the mother, who is being represented by attorney Shaz Bartlett, said she was compelled to approach the court as her child was prone to violent outbursts, had threatened to harm herself and was a danger to her younger siblings.
While the Health Department is yet to file its papers in the matter, the mother has put up medical reports which detail her daughter’s condition, including discharge reports from two government hospitals.
She said she was repeatedly being turned away by public hospitals despite professionals advising her that her daughter needed permanent care.
The woman said she did not have the financial means to have the child placed in a private facility.
An interim order, which was granted recently, ordered that the child be admitted to Town Hill hospital in Pietermaritzburg pending an application to be made by her mother.
The mother was directed to make an application this week for her daughter to be permanently placed at another KwaZulu-Natal hospital.
In her affidavit, the mother said on one occasion, her daughter threatened to cut her stomach open with a carving knife as she believed there was a baby inside.
She also broke mirrors and refused to wear clothes.
The mother said she and her family were not able to help her daughter and were afraid of her.
“Her condition is something well beyond our control.
“We do not know when she is going to attack either someone else or herself.”
In her affidavit, the woman said she first noticed a change in her daughter’s behaviour in 2012 when she became irritable and aggressive and appeared to want to hurt herself.
When the daughter’s condition worsened and she began to cut herself, she was admitted to hospital in December 2013, but she did not improve.
In 2014, she was admitted to Town Hill for a brief time and to two other hospitals last year.
The mother said her child was diagnosed with mood disorders and was prescribed medication, but her condition did not improve.
In December last year, she was again admitted to Town Hill, but was discharged in January.
The mother said in January, a psychiatrist at Town Hill advised her that there was nothing they could do for her daughter.
She was told she needed to find a permanent placement for her at a facility that assisted children.
The mother was advised that the hospital would assist her with an application for her child to be placed in another facility, but that would take up to six weeks.
She said her daughter’s condition had continued to worsen in the interim and she had been forced to call the police for assistance during an incident in February.
Earlier this month she was told that no application had been sent to the other hospital for her daughter’s stay.
She requested the application form and sent it to the relevant doctors to be completed.
The application was adjourned to April 5.
Health Department spokesman Sam Mkhwanazi said the department would not comment on the matter as it was pending before court.
The Mercury