CEO of the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) Kei­th Mc­Don­ald is promis­ing that if any em­ploy­ee is found cul­pa­ble in deny­ing a 13-month-old ba­by care at the Mara­bel­la Health Cen­tre on Fri­day, he or she will be sanc­tioned.

Mc­Don­ald said he had a pre­lim­i­nary re­port be­fore him yes­ter­day, but there were still out­stand­ing de­tails that are need­ed. He said the in­ves­ti­ga­tor will be speak­ing with staff at the health cen­tre soon.

“We are do­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­cause if any­body was wrong in the process, the sanc­tions will ap­ply. The same way we will de­fend our doc­tors and nurs­es if they do the right thing, if they do wrong, it is the same way they will have to an­swer and face the con­se­quences.

“We are here for the pa­tients who are our main cus­tomers and we need to treat them with a cer­tain lev­el of re­spect. We are a health fa­cil­i­ty and our pur­pose is to help the pub­lic so we are in­ves­ti­gat­ing it and what­ev­er comes out of it, mark my word, if it is wrong­do­ing on the part of a par­tic­u­lar in­di­vid­ual, then we will take the nec­es­sary ac­tion to dis­ci­pline,” Mc­Don­ald said.

On Fri­day, Mara­bel­la res­i­dent Suni­ta Bal­go­b­in took her son to the health cen­tre af­ter his eyes be­came swollen to the point that it could have hard­ly open. She said that she ar­rived at the cen­tre at 3.43 pm but was told that doc­tors would not see them be­cause the health cen­tre was clos­ing at 4 pm.

De­spite con­tact­ing the SWRHA’s com­plaints hot­line and was ad­vised to re­main at the cen­tre, while em­ploy­ees at the Qual­i­ty Im­prove­ment De­part­ment spoke to work­ers at the health cen­tre, a se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer was in­struct­ed to es­cort Bal­go­b­in out of the health cen­tre.

Bal­go­b­in said she was al­so be­rat­ed by nurs­ing staff and even­tu­al­ly had to leave the health cen­tre with­out her son be­ing seen by a doc­tor.

She had to con­tact her per­son­al doc­tor, who ad­vised her about treat­ment over the phone. Bal­go­b­in shared the sto­ry of her vis­it on Face­book on Fri­day, which to date has been shared over 3,000 and has many com­ments from peo­ple com­plain­ing about the ser­vice at the health cen­tre.