Judgment in MoH lawsuit set for December
Lebogang Mosikare | Thursday May 21, 2015 15:51
Thirty-nine-year-old Stella Dube, the complainant in the case, alleges that a Nyangabgwe Referral Hospital (NRH) medical doctor left a gauze inside her genitals after the surgery.Dube said that she suffered, not only physical but also emotional and psychological pain following the operation to remove a cyst from her genitals on May 11, 2012. During the continuation of the trial yesterday, Dr Kitenga Sebastien said that he indeed attended Dube on the May 11 operation.
Sebastien said that he removed an abscess (a pus filled cavity) and not a cyst (a membranous sack that contains fluid that grows abnormally in human beings) from the plaintiff. He said that he did so to help his colleague who told him that he (colleague) was not sure about how to perform the surgery. “I then stitched the wound to allow the pus to come out and told the nurse to give the patient some medication to ease the pain she was feeling,” said Sebastien, adding that he instructed the patient to use a sitz bath four times every day to clean the wound.
Dr Sebastien said that the gauze was supposed to be removed the following day, but was not sure if his colleague who initially attended Dube told her to remove it or not.
Asked for clarity by Solomon, Sebastien said that the gauze can fall on its own from patients who do the sitz bath regularly adding that from the way he put it inside the plaintiff’s genitals there was no way it could have stuck inside her genitals.
Sebastien added that he did not tell Dube other medical advise she was to follow after the surgery because he thought that his colleague had already relayed that to her.
Rodger Calendar, Dube’s attorney, then asked Sebastien if as the treating doctor, it was not his responsibility to inform Dube of all the procedures she was to follow after the operation? In reply, Sebastien said: “I discussed the issue with my colleague and I thought that he had already explained anything relating to the surgery and treatment to her. I thought that there was no need to repeat that taking into consideration that she was sedated after the operation.” Sebastien said that he never saw Dube after he treated her, but only heard that she also came to the hospital complaining about the same problem from another doctor at NRH.
Sebastien said that following Dube’s numerous visits to Jubilee Clinic any doctor attending her could have seen the gauze in her private parts because it was visible from the way he placed it. He denied Calendar’s assertion that any doctor attending Dube after he treated her could not have seen the gauze because he (Sebastien) had stitched it inside the wound.
He said that he only put the gauze in order to drain pus from the complainant’s genitals and it was visible.
Calendar said to Sebastien that taking from the documents that he had before him, it was clear that a gauze was removed from the plaintiff’s genitals as can be attested by a doctor from Tati River Clinic who discovered it. Sebastien said that he could only say that he attended the applicant once when she came to NRH to seek help and thereafter never met her again, as his colleagues and not him had helped her. That said, Solomon told Sebastien that the doctor from Tati River Clinic had said that he indeed found the gauze inside the plaintiff’s genitals.
According to Solomon, the doctor said that it had adhered to the wound and it looked like it had embedded itself to the genitals. “I cannot say if the gauze found inside the appellant’s private parts was the one I inserted or not,” said Sebastien.