Meet Lelothando

This is one mother’s story that resonates with many others.

“My child was crying. She was swollen all over. She couldn’t even open her eyes. When she breathed, it was shallow and rapid as she tried to draw breath. I was in a state because I just couldn’t believe what was happening to my child. She was so sick, and my heart was in pain.”

It’s an ordinary, wintry Monday evening in Robertson and Sive prepares the bucket of bathwater for two-year-old Lelothando. Sive bathes her little girl and puts her on the bed. She empties the water from the bucket and refills it with freshly boiled water to bathe herself. She fleetingly turns around and it’s at that moment that Lelothando somehow falls and knocks over the bucket with boiled water. The scalding water splashes over the little one’s right arm and leg and she screams in agony.

This is when Sive and Lelothando’s weeklong nightmare began. Sive rushed Lelothando to the nearest hospital where her wounds were cleaned, bandaged, and sent home. The young mom diligently took Lelothando back to the clinic on Tuesday and Thursday, as instructed to, for another round of cleaning the wound before she was sent home again. Friday dawned and Lelothando had taken a turn for the worse. Sive was very worried. “My child was breathing very heavily. She had a runny tummy and a temperature. Saturday morning, I woke up early and took her to the hospital and they admitted us.” But by Monday morning, after spending the weekend in the hospital, Sive noticed a bad smell coming from Lelothando’s right-arm bandage. She alerted the medical staff who arranged for Lelothando to be transferred to Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital.

After a painful two-and-half-hour ambulance ride from Robertson to Rondebosch, Lelothando was admitted to the Children’s Hospital and urgently attended to. The Red Cross staff were very concerned; little Lelothando’s condition had deteriorated throughout the week despite her mother’s best efforts, but the right care required during that first critical week was sadly not provided.

It’s a month later now, and Lelothando is still being cared for at the Children’s Hospital. Sive is happy. “You can see that she’s healing very well. Her leg, where she had burned, is healing. I can see that she’s walking. We are just waiting on the right arm to heal as well,” she says.

The mom goes on to say, “I am very grateful to the staff and the clinicians and the nurses here at Red Cross because they are very hands-on. They assist when they’re needed, and they’ve been very kind.”

This story highlights the high percentage of children under the age of five who are brought into emergency centres across South Africa due to burning. This percentage increases exponentially in the winter months.

The Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital Trauma Unit Surveillance Report 2021 indicates that 15% of patients were admitted due to burn wounds.

“Burns were the 3rd leading cause of injury in children treated at the Trauma Unit in 2021. Of the under-5-years, 84% of burns were hot fluid burns. All hot fluid burns happened in the home. Burn injuries occur most frequently during the winter season, between June and September when it is coldest.”

It is thanks to the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital specialised paediatric Burns Unit, the only specialised facility in the Western Cape, that mothers like Sive can tell their stories with a happy ending. Their children survived to tell the tale.