Chaos at Accident Scene Highlights Deadly Rivalry in South Africa's Healthcare System

It’s 17:41 on Saturday, December 14 2024, and I have just come back home from the last day of the four-day SACP special national congress in Boksburg, east of Johannesburg, when I receive a frantic call from my sister Loyiso screaming, “Luyolo, ndiyafa [I am dying!]”.

My wife was about to serve supper. I had just put my laptop bag down and was busy filling her in about my day with the communists and other general stuff.
I casually answered the phone thinking Loyiso was probably calling to check up on the kids as she is wont to do, especially on weekends, but it was not to be.

With the call now on loudspeaker, we quickly try to ascertain where she might be and she responds by mentioning familiar landmarks around her: “I’m by Banoyolo’s school [which is Halfway House Primary in Midrand], I was driving to the Mall of Africa.”

With Loyiso’s house in Centurion, we quickly work out that she must be somewhere on the N1S. We jump on the car and hit the road. When we join the N1S from the Olifantsfontein Road, reality hits us that we could be on the right track as traffic is quickly building up as we approach the Big Bird Engen Garage.

I’m driving like a madman, and we locate the accident scene between the New Road and Allandale Road, with a number of tow trucks and a JMPD freeway patrol car already on the scene.

We find some good Samaritans ‘holding’ my sister’s hand and trying to make conversation – to keep her conscious. We find her in terrible pain: she has broken her left arm, three ribs, each in two places, and is struggling to breathe.

A tyre from a long-haul truck traveling in the opposite direction – N1N – came off. It flew past the barrier separating the major highways and crashed on the VW Jetta’s bonnet, obliterating the windscreen, and ripped off a sizeable part of the roof before rolling off on the other end of the busy freeway.

It could have been deadly had she had a passenger with her, or the tyre had hit the driver’s side. Of course, this resulted in a multi vehicle accident, but luckily no one died but Loyiso was the most injured of all the other affected parties.

The JMPD officer asks if I know Loyiso and I reply in the affirmative by stating she’s my sister. I’m granted ‘access’ to her. I reach out for my phone to call the ambulance, but I’m told that’s been done already and they should arrive any moment from now. I make the call, nonetheless.

By this time, we are joined by an off-duty emergency guy who decided to pull off and see if he could “assist”. (This guy would cause lots of problems at the accident scene). He “looks” at her and says she’s stable and that he has called his workplace to dispatch an ambulance. This guy says he works for Netcare, a JSE-listed private healthcare group.

The Gauteng EMS ambulance arrived on the scene and dutifully helped those injured. By this time, I’m busy working the phones, checking which car insurance she’s with, asking them to authorise a tow trucking company to take the car away. I also have to attend to the JMPD officer looking for Loyiso’s ID card, driving licence and home address, among other details.

I have with me all her personal belongings: a purse containing her ID, drivers’ licence, medical aid, bank cards, retail store cards, and two cellphones, among other things.
In between I must answer her cellphones and my own personal phone: Loyiso’s concerned friends and associates want some details about what exactly happened, with some on their way to the scene. My head is about to explode.

Noticing that the Gauteng EMS personnel have not attended to Loyiso, I question why, and I’m told the Netcare guy chased them away and/or prevented them. Bewildered, I confront him and he mouths off something about Loyiso deserving “the best medical care” and that these other guys were not up to scratch.

This happened after his colleague driving a Netcare Toyota Fortuner had arrived at the scene and started administering drip and checking some vital signs. But first he had asked me if Loyiso was on medical aid and the plan details.

Mind you, I have to carefully relay all these questions to my sister who can barely keep up. When I pleaded with the Gauteng EMS personnel to take her to Life Carstenhof Hospital, they told me the ambulance was full already. There were four injured people inside and they could not take more. After all, they had offered to assist but the Netcare guy chased them away, they said.

It is long past the hour mark and the Netcare ambulance has not yet arrived. When I register my displeasure with the Netcare guy he says there had been a number of accidents due to inclement weather. Frustrated, I call Carewell Ambulances which are based in Midrand and they promise to dispatch an ambulance. I called another ambulance company as backup.

Needless to say, my wife tells me there were some among the personnel at the scene who wanted to make it their business to refer my sister to the “right” law firm for Road Accident Fund processes and/or claims.

By now it had started to get dark and the JMPD officer had exchanged unpleasant words with the Netcare guy after questioning why he had blocked medical staff from attending to my sister. The Netcare guy who had arrived later at the scene was extremely rude to the SANRAL officials who were concerned why their ambulance was taking long to arrive.
They were fearful another accident could happen judging by the speed the cars were travelling at on the dimly lit freeway. 

The Netcare guy dismissed him by saying this was “his” accident scene and mockingly told him to go “man his cones”, referring to the cones they put up to notify motorists of the accident scene. Indeed, another accident did occur, just after the Netcare ambulance had arrived almost two hours later.

You wouldn’t believe what happened next. The Netcare personnel wanted to bully us by demanding that my sister be taken to Netcare Sunninghill Hospital, where she would purportedly receive the best care in the world.

We protested that she be taken to Life Carstenhof Hospital, after all, this is “our” hospital and can bear witness to the capable team of specialists they have in their arsenal: one of my kids was born there, my wife underwent a successful procedure following a life-threatening ailment.

My cousin brother who works for the EMPD arrived at the accident scene and we took the decision that my sister be taken to Life Carstenhof Hospital.

The Netcare personnel, including their driver, were frothing at the mouth trying to convince us that Loyiso be taken to one of their facilities. They even went to the extent of saying there are no available beds in Life Carstenhof Hospital and wanted to make us to “listen on the radio” to one of their colleagues who would confirm there were no beds at Carstenhof.

We insisted they take Loyiso to Carstenhof or are going to report them, record the conversation and put it on social media. It’s then they relented. We followed the ambulance to Life Carstenhof Hospital and lo and behold there was no shortage of beds at the facility.

Loyiso was admitted to the ICU and underwent a successful operation. She has since been discharged.

South Africa, this deadly competition among healthcare providers at the expense of people's lives needs to stop. It is for this reason I call on President Cyril Ramaphosa to move with speed and fully implement National Health Insurance in order for this nonsense to stop.

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