Durban – Silence from the KwaZulu-Natal Health Department has prompted a traumatised KwaMashu family to seek legal recourse after their son was kept at the department’s morgue overnight.
At the time it was believed Msizi Mkhize had died.
“Since last week’s trauma and pain of thinking about how my child must have gone through the entire evening and morning in that morgue, we have not heard a word from the department to explain what happened, said Mkhize's distraught father, Peter.
“Imagine going to the morgue in the morning to view the body of your loved one, and to be told at midday that the person is still alive?
“I’m still hurting. I’m bleeding for my child and I hope he has forgiven me for not being able to save him from the confinements of that cold darkness and the pain he must have endured,” said Peter Mkhize.
The family arrived at the Phoenix morgue at 8am last Tuesday to do the paperwork and view the body.
But at noon, a mortuary employee said Msizi was still alive. He was rushed to Mahatma Gandhi Hospital where he died about five hours later.
The 28-year-old was knocked down by a car while walking home with his friend, Siphesihle Zulu, in KwaMashu last Monday night. He was declared dead at the accident scene, allegedly by Health Department paramedics, and was taken to the morgue.
“My son was self-employed. He leaves behind two children, one in Grade 6 and the other in Grade 10.
“Now I’m left with the responsibility of seeing these children through life having no permanent job myself,” said Mkhize.
He said the trauma his family went through was unbearable, especially because his son lay on a hospital stretcher at Mahatma Gandhi Hospital with doctors trying to warm him up.
It was a memory that would stay with him forever, he said.
He claimed that when his son died in hospital, the doctor who performed the autopsy said it was the coldness from lying in the mortuary that had killed him.
On Wednesday, the family went to the morgue to request a copy of the doctor’s report on the cause of death but were told the request could be made only through a lawyer.
“We have therefore taken a decision as a family to engage a lawyer to handle this for us because the (health) department has failed to come to us with an explanation,” Mkhize said.
“This is our own way of seeking closure and it’s too late for excuses as to why no one bothered to tell us why my son had to die this way. We are very disappointed with the way the department has handled this matter.”
A legal practitioner confirmed he would meet the family.
Siphesihle Zulu told the Daily News that he believed his friend’s life could have been saved if competent paramedics had attended to his friend.
“He was just a step off the road when the car knocked him down. I can’t tell the extent of the injuries, but if an injured person can survive a night in the mortuary, then surely the injuries were not life-threatening.
“The paramedics only checked his pulse and declared him dead. They covered him with a foil and after a couple of hours the mortuary van arrived and took him away,” said Zulu.
Health Department head Dr Sifiso Mtshali denied the allegation that they had not contacted the family since the incident.
He said he knew Mkhize at a personal level and that he “would contact him”.
“We couldn’t have gone there to the family without a full report on the incident. Now that we have the report we will be meeting the family tomorrow (today),” said Mtshali.