Striking Workers Shut Down Durban ICU

by Jordan Yerman | June 2, 2007 at 09:42 am

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The King Edward VII Hospital in Durban , South Africa, was stormed by striking workers earlier today. The strikers, some of whom were armed, shut down the Intensive Care Unit, which forced family members to tend to their hospitalized relations.

Late on Saturday afternoon family members were looking after relatives in the hospitals -- changing their dressings and emptying their bedpans.

A doctor who spoke on condition of anonymity said he believed it was the first time in the hospital’s history that the ICU had been forced to close.

Doctors were awaiting ambulances to transfer critically ill patients to other hospitals.

KwaZulu-Natal Health Department spokesperson Zebe Zwane said: "Arrangements are being made for critically ill patients to be moved to other institutions, especially children."

"The situation is challenging," she said.

Another doctor, who also wished to remain anonymous, said that a group of striking workers "invaded" the hospital’s ICU at about 12pm.

"It was mostly general assistants and orderlies. All the nurses were here … they were willing to work. This is absolutely ridiculous," he said.

"We got families caring for patients, they [the nurses] were just pulled out of the ICU," he added.

A 53-year-old woman on a ventilator was being attended to by her two daughters and son-in-law. The daughter, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said her mother had suffered an emergency hernia and had been transferred from the McCords Hospital a week earlier.