Cape Town - For almost four days, a Cape Town woman was the sole doctor saving victims of the devastating church building collapse in Nigeria, which left dozens of South Africans dead – and now she has told her extraordinary story.
Dr Thandeka Mayekiso, 49, of Durbanville, trained as a doctor in the St Lucia islands in the Caribbean and has worked in the medical and health-care field since 2009. She was in Lagos on private business.
Mayekiso was visiting the campus of preacher TB Joshua’s Synagogue Church of All Nations church prior to the tragedy, hoping to meet a fellow South African at the cafeteria next to the guesthouse.
But instead of a social visit, she ended up as a Florence Nightingale to surviving South Africans.
She was sitting at a window in the cafeteria when the guesthouse collapsed.
“Soon after the building collapsed, I told them ‘I’m an SA doctor – I’m not practising, but I’m going to help and then I’ll hand over the reins’. But help never came, and so I ended up treating patients from Friday until Monday,” she told the Cape Argus in an exclusive interview on Thursday night.
“I had to assume responsibility right from the beginning. You couldn’t keep count – there were so many, many people being pulled from here and there.
“I set up a triage – a makeshift clinic to assess patients – and began treating victims.
“There were gashes, deep lacerations, dislocated joints, head wounds, people cut by metal, shock – injuries you’d see like if there had been an earthquake.
“We only had surgical gloves for three or four people – so I picked up plastic bags to use. We had a few basics, like cotton, but no glucose to treat those in shock, so we made sugar water. We just gave them the most primitive stuff. Three hours after it happened, I realised I had pulled a tendon and sprained an ankle, so I was limping. But they sent us food and water right through – they really took care of us,” Mayekiso said.
“I worked there from Friday until Tuesday night, when I left ground zero and went straight to the airport.”
Mayekiso’s first terrible shift lasted a full 26 hours – from Friday midday, until Saturday afternoon, through the night.
“I had two to three hours’ sleep, and then we continued,” she said.
“A Nigerian doctor arrived on Friday at sunset, but was gone by midnight. I only saw him again on Monday.”
The team she worked with were all “internationals” – nurses and paramedics from South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe, later joined by a nursing matron and two or three Nigerian nurses. She said of the rescue effort: “If we had had resources like sniffer dogs, or sensors to sense warm bodies, we could have recovered many, many more people.
She said, however, that they had been “looked after” by church staff.
“The prophet was kind enough to send someone on Saturday morning, acknowledging us, saying we were doing a great job. He sent a gift pack, and offered us executive suites to stay in between shifts. The prophet gave us all the support we needed – he kept sending people to make sure I was okay. I’d make a call I needed gloves, and boxes would arrive. I was so touched. The guy is absolutely distraught. The fact that so many people who died were from another country really got to him. He was also very humbled that the triage set up was by internationals. He was so grateful.”
She said of the ordeal: “I’m okay. I get exhausted when things don’t happen – it was so frustrating. But I’m okay.”
She is due back in Cape Town on Saturday.
Cape Argus