Jan Hendrik van Kraayenburg believes he would still have his left leg if he hadn’t gone to Kraaifontein Community Health Care Centre to get a cut on his foot treated.
The 61-year-old Bonnie Brae man’s story of how he lost his leg to gangrene is just one of several complaints of negligence and poor conditions levelled at the Sixth Avenue facility.
Residents say the elderly, sick and frail queue for hours to see a doctor only to be told to come back the next day.
Mr Van Kraayenburg visited the health centre with a painful 3cm cut on his foot after a door fell on it on Christmas Eve last year.
He said he and his wife had sat at the health centre for about five hours before nurses had told them to return the next day.
He had then waited several more hours the following day before a nurse had closed his wound with two fabric plasters.
But a nasty surprise waited for him when he returned for a “wound cleansing” the following week – his left food was black with gangrene.
“Being a diabetic, I had to be on some treatment so that my wounds do not get infected, but my wound was not wrapped up properly: They used a plaster. And I was not on treatment and developed wet gangrene,” Mr Van Kraayenburg said. “I was in a lot of pain.”
He was referred to Karl Bremer Hospital where doctors told him the gangrene had spread: his left leg would have to be amputated just above the knee.