A woman who claimed a clinic told her to take her sick baby to a sangoma has withdrawn her complaint against the KwaZulu-Natal health department.
|||Durban - A woman who claimed a clinic told her to take her sick baby to a sangoma has withdrawn her complaint against the KwaZulu-Natal health department, it said on Monday.
Department spokesman Sam Mkhwanazi said the mother had not filled in the register to show that she visited the Mpathe clinic near Dundee. Two patients who visited the clinic on the same day did not recall seeing the woman there, he said.
A farmer, Paul Theunissen, previously said one of his employees had told him of the baby being referred to a sangoma. He said he was told one of the nursing sisters told the woman to take the baby to a sangoma because “the ancestors were cross with her”.
“We went out to collect the baby, who was covered in some kind of muti and was sicker than before, but the sangoma was reluctant to let her go,” he said.
“Eventually we managed to take the baby to a private doctor, who diagnosed bronchitis,” said Theunissen.
Theunissen said he lodged a complaint with the hospital. The complaint was confirmed last week by Dundee Provincial Hospital spokeswoman Mbali Ntshingila.
Mkhwanazi said on Monday that Theunissen instructed the woman not to speak to the health department and she then withdrew her complaint. He said the department was disappointed by this lack of co-operation.
Sapa