MEDICINE WITHOUT CARE: Five traumatic days that changed Siya’s life forever

Two-year-old Siyahluma Jiba was taken to St Elizabeth Hospital in 2009 by her mother Sibuyiselwe Jiba after she started suffering seizures and fits.

Just five days later, the once- healthy child was permanently paralysed and blind.

Today Siyahluma is nine years old and spends all her days and nights on her mother’s bed, unable to move, see, or talk.

Speaking to the Daily Dispatch last week, Siyahluma’s mother recalled the harrowing events seven years ago that changed their lives forever.

She said they had left their village of Makhwalweni to seek urgent medical help at the hospital for Siyahluma after the fits started. The 30km trip is mostly on dirt road.

“She was attacked by fits while we were at home,” said Jiba, “so we took her to the St Elizabeth Hospital.

“Her temperature was above 40ºC but she was not admitted and observed.”

When she asked why, the nurse who attended to her daughter said the doctor had not been on a tea or lunch break and was tired.

“I asked the nurse ‘would my child rather die because the doctor did not have his lunch?’ Instead of responding the nurse gave us Panado syrup and discharged us from the hospital,” Jiba said.

While returning to the village, Siyahluma suffered more fits.

Jiba explained: “I kept feeding her the Panado we were given from the hospital. We got home at midnight and Siyahluma continued being attacked by fits. This went on until 3.30am. It was pouring with rain outside and we could not rush back to the hospital due to the (poor condition of the) dirt road.”

Siyahluma slept most of the following morning.

“The elders said the long sleep was due to her being exhausted from fits. The following day we took her back to hospital and when we joined the tar road we decided to no longer take her to St Elizabeth.

“We took her to a special doctor in Flagstaff. He told us to rush her to St Augustine Hospital in Durban.”

In Durban the child continued having fits. “She was then transferred to King Edward Hospital where she was also attacked by fits and was transferred to Albert Luthuli Hospital in Durban where she was admitted to high care.”

Jiba said her daughter was discharged a day later. “By that time her head was dangling and she could not keep it up, her feet were skewed sideways and she could no longer stand or do anything.”

The mother took her child back to Lusikiki where she noticed that Siyahluma had lost her eyesight too.

By the end of 2009 the young girl, a once able-bodied child, was unable to do anything for herself.

She started attending physiotherapy at St Elizabeth Hospital to help her walk again, but Jiba said nothing had changed over the ensuing years.

“My daughter was not born like this, she could walk, run at the beach and play with other children,” said Jiba.

The girl’s late grandmother Nonzwakazi Jiba successfully sued the Eastern Cape department of health for R15.5-million, which was paid out on April 22 2015.

Jiba, who was enrolled at a nursing school at the time, now works at a public hospital in the female ward. She has developed a passion for assisting rural mothers who find themselves in similar circumstances.

“I try my best. Even when a patient’s condition does not seem serious, you just never know if what befell my daughter will not befall them by refusing to treat them,” Jiba said. — zwangam@dispatch.co.za