After begging nurses for days to change his surgical dressings‚ a horrified patient at Port Elizabeth’s Livingstone Hospital woke up on Tuesday to find his massive leg wound covered in maggots.
Clint Morris‚ 40‚ was seriously injured in a scooter accident a month ago and has undergone multiple surgeries on both legs.
But nothing could have prepared him for the shock of seeing the maggot-infested wound after nurses had earlier told him to change his dressings himself.
Incredulous Eastern Cape Department of Health superintendent-general Dr Thobile Mbengashe intervened after being informed of what had happened and seeing pictures of the wound.
He said a full investigation would be carried out.
Morris said on Tuesday: “I felt weird. I looked down and saw these things crawling around my wounds.”
After he pointed it out to the nurses in Ward 2A‚ they still made him wait for 90 minutes before coming to clean his wound.
“What could I do? I sat there watching these white little maggots crawling around my wounds‚” Morris said.
“I felt sick. I almost passed out from shock.”
Morris said since being admitted to Ward 2A on December 13‚ his dressings had only been changed once – on December 23 – after his visitors had asked the medical superintendent’s office to intervene.
“The nurses told me they were understaffed and I should do it myself‚” he said.
One of Morris’s legs was almost ripped off and the other broken in a scooter accident on December 2.
Read the full story here – TMG Digital/The Herald
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