By Patson Chilemba
A Lundazi Council police officer and his wife are mourning the death of their 3-month old daughter having agonizingly watched her struggle to her death after the genset at Lundazi General Hospital ran out of diesel.
Narrating the incident to Daily Revelation yesterday, council employee Stephen Nkole Zulu said he and his wife watched their child “deteriorating” after the oxygen machine that had been administered to aid with her breathing failed, following electricity failure after the genset the hospital uses during the daily load shedding ran out of diesel.
Zulu said his daughter had earlier on Monday been diagnosed with pneumonia and was aided by the oxygen machine throughout her hospitalization.
“On Monday around 18 hours my daughter was given a hospital bed but was not attended to until the following day on Tuesday around 11 hours the following day, very late. After being attended to, she was immediately placed on oxygen having been found with pneumonia,” Zulu said. “So she stayed in hospital and was unable to breastfeed until the following day when I received a phone call that the situation is not okay. So I went there, by then in Lundazi we had no electricity but they were using a genset. But around 06:10 the genset ran out of fuel.”
Zulu said fearful that the diesel had run out, so he asked the nurse about the next course of action, but was told that they had no option and did not even know the time they were going to buy the fuel.
“So now look at the situation here, so there was no option. I was just crying watching my baby struggling to breath, just watching my wife and saying ‘what can we do?’” Zulu said.
He said they were told that the authorities were aware of the situation and that the place where fuel could be purchased was not even far, about just two kilometers from the hospital.
“The nurse said they will come and buy when those in charge come, the time they did not know. So no option,” Zulu said, saying the deceased was their 7th child. “So sad watching the baby struggling. We buried her yesterday.”
And Mrs Zulu said she was told that the child could not be attended to on the first day she was admitted because someone had gotten the keys for the storeroom where medicines were kept.
She said the child was only administered with panado the following day in the morning, until the Doctor passed through the wards around midday and immediately placed her on the oxygen machine.
“But in the night the male nurse on duty who looked drunk confessed saying he was drunk on account of the pressure from his mother who was hospitalized. He said he had asked someone to work on his behalf but the person he asked had not come,” she said. “So he only wrote something on the paper and left and I rushed to another ward where I found another nurse who helped me place the machine properly on my child’s nose. At that time we were using the electricity from the main national electricity grid, but around 05:00 hours electricity went and then they switched on the genset. But it went off after some time.”
