CHITUNGWIZA Central Hospital has filed an appearance to defend notice in a case in which the institution and its three medical specialists are being sued for $127 000 by a woman claiming damages for deliberately and negligently carrying out a botched operation on her.
BY CHARLES LAITON
In her litigation filed at the High Court on November 13 this year, Florence Teterai said the hospital and the doctors conducted a “well-orchestrated medical scam”, which resulted in her permanent disability.
She cited doctors Makota, Sangare and Ngoni together with the medical institution as respondents. In her declaration, Teterai said after getting involved in a car accident on June 18 last year, she suffered multiple fractures that needed urgent surgery.
Teterai further said the first operation was only carried out on June 30 last year, at which date her life-threatening problems started.
“On June 30, 2017, the first operation was done by defendants (Makota, Sangare and Ngoni) for fixation of the supracondylar fracture of the right femur. The problem started when this operation was done,” she said through her lawyers.
“The defendants negligently underperformed the operation and it was badly done so much that the X-rays which were taken on review after excessive pus was coming out of the operated area showed that the operation was recklessly done.”
According to Tererai, on her second visit to hospital, she was then approached by the three doctors who asked her to go to their friend, an orthopaedician and trauma specialist, a Doctor Makoni, who owns a private surgery in Chitungwiza, saying he would correct the operation.
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“The defendants refused to conduct the second operation of the right ankle and gave a reason that they had no gowns to wear in the theatre at the fourth defendant’s (Chitungwiza Central Hospital) institution. The first to third defendants (Makota, Sangare and Ngoni) then ordered the plaintiff to go and have the operation done by Doctor Makoni,” the lawyers said.
As if that was not enough, when Tererai reported the doctors’ refusal to their administrator, her actions did not go down well with the doctors, who then conducted another operation on July 19, 2016, “which operation was again ill-done in order to fix the plaintiff and to cause her to go to Dr Makoni”.
Tererai also said Makoni himself approached her and told her “that whether she liked it or not, she would come to his surgery unless she wanted her leg amputated”.
“After realising that her health was deteriorating, the plaintiff had to go to Dr Makoni . . . who then had to re-do the operation completely and told her that the operation was badly done and recklessly so much that her leg could have been amputated had it not been corrected within a week,” the lawyers said.
For all “her ordeal” at the hands of the three doctors and the hospital, Tererai said she paid over $500 to Makoni and $1 500 to Chitungwiza Central Hospital, adding “the payments were made at the instance of the fourth defendant (hospital)’s gross negligence and highest level of unprofessionalism and corrupt tendencies”.
