Johannesburg - A mentally ill patient who died after jumping out of a window at South Rand Hospital in Joburg had been transferred to a general ward after being assessed, the Gauteng Department of Health has said.
This comes three months after another mentally ill patient raped a nurse at the same hospital.
The body of the 49-year-old man was discovered by a security guard on Thursday morning and he rushed into the hospital to raise the alarm. It is not yet known when the man jumped out the window because his body was already cold when it was discovered on the tar.
Department of Health spokesman Steve Mabona said the man was admitted on April 24 as a psychiatric patient but was transferred to a general ward with no signs of psychosis after assessment.
On Wednesday, he was transferred to a general ward for renal failure treatment where he allegedly locked himself in a toilet.
“During the staff change-over on Wednesday night, the patient locked himself in the toilet.
“When he was not found in his bed a search was conducted right away. It was then discovered that he had jumped out the window and died instantly.
“It should be noted that this incident did not take place in the psychiatry ward and that the hospital is capable of treating psychiatric patients,” Mabona said.
When the nurse was raped at the hospital in January, Mabona said at the time that the patient had been discharged and then went to the emergency section where the nurse was later raped.
After the rape incident, The Star reported how staff members at the hospital had not been happy about the fact that the psychiatric patients were being accommodated at South Rand Hospital, saying the hospital did not have a designated section for them.
As a result, those patients were forced to be accommodated in general wards which did not have burglar bars.
A source said having the psychiatric patients at the hospital had since come with myriad problems.
“Some started assaulting staff members. One got out of the ward through the window, took a fire extinguisher and sprayed the foam from the extinguisher at management's offices.
“A female psychiatric patient jumped from the sixth floor but was not injured,” the source said at the time.
“In another instance, two psychiatric patients were in a fight and one hit the other with a bedpan. He had a gash on his head that had to be stitched.
“Then this month, two psychiatric patients were in the bathroom and one was badly burnt after the other told him to get into a bath of scalding water.”
The DA’s health spokesman, Jack Bloom, also raised concerns about the situation at the time. He visited the hospital and saw that psychiatric patients were mixed with other patients, who found their behaviour disturbing.
“At one ward I visited, more than half the 23 patients had mental disorders or drug problems. There appeared to be about 30 such patients in the entire hospital who can exhibit strange or violent behaviour.
“I saw a mattress that had been burnt by one mentally disturbed patient, and beds that were broken during violence,” Bloom said.
The Star