A troop of looting monkeys and a cluster of stray cats are terro rising patients, staff and visitors at the Letaba Hospital inNkowankowa in Limpopo.
The primates blitz into wards, jump on top of beds and patients, interfere with intravenous drips and steal food for the sick.
Doctors, nurses, staff and even visitors are not spared by the animals that jump through windows and have free reign in the wards. Physical contact with monkeys exposes people to dangerous diseases including yellow fever, tuberculosis and hepatitis.
Health experts advise that a person who gets bitten by a monkey should also be evaluated for risk of tetanus, bacterial infection, rabies and the herpes B virus.
Sunday World witnessed the monkeys in action during a visit to the hospital last Friday. The vervets sedately waltzed into the diabetic ward and began terrorising patients, some of whom were gravely ill.
The critters then climbed on their beds and ate the food, fruit and vegetables left for the patients by their visitors. A battalion of cats stalked the passages, intermittently venturing into the wards. Out in the parking lot, some of the monkeys smooch on top of bonnets of cars.
A nurse, who did not want to be named because she is not allowed to speak to the media, said the monkeys had been terrorising them and the patients for many years now. She said repeated pleas to the Limpopo Department of Health to intervene had fallen on deaf ears.
“Sometimes they poo and urinate in the wards and the passages, but cleaners would clean up the mess,” said the nurse.
She also said that she was hypochondriac as a result of the monkeys relieving themselves on the floor.
“These things are animals, they carry diseases that could make us sick. I’m worried that I might be sick already,” she said.
Another nurse said the monkeys emerged from the nearest groove of trees and jumped into the hospital wards by scaling the fence.
“They must find a way of erecting a fence that could prevent or make it difficult for these monkeys to jump into the yard,” said the nurse.
Another nurse said that the cats were also a nuisance and should also be relocated elsewhere.
“One day one of the doctors walked into the ward to attend to a patient and found a group of cats in there and made a quick U-turn because she has a phobia for cats. The nurses had to remove the cats before she could enter the ward and do her job,” said the nurse.
The nurse also said that although they abhor the cats, they are sometimes useful because they eat rodents that have been harassing the patients and wolfing down their food.
Spokesperson for the Department of Health, Neil Shikwambana, said they were weaving a strategy to deal with the monkeys.
He stated that they have already installed burglars on the hospital windows to prevent the apes from jumping into the wards.
He said that although the cats were helping them kill rats and snakes coming into the hospital, they would find a way to deal with them if they were multiplying in large numbers.
In 2019 then Minister of health Aaron Motsoaledi appointed a task team to tackle an invasion of monkeys at Durban’s RK Khan Hospital, where staff and patients were being attacked daily by the animals.
However, the problem persisted, which prompted the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union in KwaZulu-Natal to stage a march in a bid to force the authorities to act.
