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EVERY time a body is discovered, the family of Patrick Tsela rushes to that scene.
This Mpumalanga family has been doing this for the past five years since their brother went missing. The 55-year-old father of six went missing while he was admitted to Themba Hospital in KaBokweni. Patrick was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery on 18 June 2019.
He was supposed to undergo the surgery on 19 June, but the hospital staff were shocked to find him gone. They then contacted his family and shared the news.
Patrick’s sister, Lizzy Tsela (50) told Daily Sun that the hospital called them and said their brother was missing, they could not find him in his bed, and they had been trying to locate him since the morning. She said they were told that the staff had tried to search for him and even went as far as looking for him at the mortuary, but with no luck.
“After that call we were never given any update or progress about his whereabouts. It was us who would inform the hospital about our efforts to find him. The hospital’s management promised to call our family for a meeting, and we are still waiting for that call five years later. We requested to view the CCTV footage, but we were told that it captures movements up until to the parking lot,” she said.
Lizzy said what surprises them is that when the family took their brother to hospital, he was unable to walk, and they had to hire a car to take him there. She said they are still asking themselves how he managed to get out of his bed and walk out of the hospital.
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“It’s been five years now, and we don’t have answers. There’s no one who gave us an explanation of what really happened. We still don’t know what happened to my brother. Every time we hear that there is a body found, we would travel to that place with the hope that it is Patrick, but we will be disappointed. We hope that we can at least find his remains, give him a dignified funeral and get closure,” she said.
Lizzy said that every year during family day, they are reminded about this incident. “There’s a time each year families would gather and visit graves of their loved ones, for us it is painful because our brother went missing, he was not buried, and no one knows what happened to him. It hurts because the hospital acts like it was just a needle that went missing,” she said.
Mpumalanga health spokesman Dumisani Malamule said the department is aware of the situation and has made contact with the family.
“It’s bizarre at how this guy has disappeared. When he went missing, we did inform the family, and we have been looking for him. Our cameras won’t show, and the mortuary has nothing. We are still tracking back from that time. We can see on the system that he was admitted to hospital, but we are still searching for that file. We are hopeful that something would come up and we are liaising with the family,” he said.
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