'IT WAS A VIOLATION OF MY BODY'

A botched surgery led to a shocking discovery: that an unregistered doctor had been permitted to operate on her

- KESHIA AFRICA

JUST over a year ago she had a high-flying career in public relations and was always on the go – now she’s in so much pain it’s a struggle simply to stand up.

A botched hysterectomy has affected every aspect of Hlengi we Mbambo’s life – and the Johannesburg woman is determined those responsible for all of this must pay.

Hlengiwe realised something had gone wrong with her op when she woke up and her gynaecologist, Dr Kofi Kwaw- Asante, told her than her bladder had started bleeding mid-surgery.

“He said he’d had to stitch it up to stop the bleeding or I would have died,” says Hlengiwe (37), who had the surgery at Life Fourways Hospital in December 2022.

Weeks after the op she experienced bad backache as well as pain when she urinated but she’d been told her recovery could take six weeks so she wasn’t overly concerned.

The pain, however, didn’t go away so in February she went to see her gynaecologist, who sent her for a CT scan.

The scan revealed her ureter, the tube responsible for transporting urine from the kidneys to the bladder, had been cut in two and the part going to the left kidney was blocked.

Not only was she in pain but her kidney had become badly damaged as urine wasn’t being transported to the bladder effectively.

Her gynaecologist referred her to urologist Dr Trevino Ridgard, who performed eight procedures to try to correct the damage but her kidney still has only 40% functionality.

Ridgard told her the damage was a direct result of the hysterectomy.

Within days she’d filed a complaint against the gynaecologist with the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA)*.