The Bheki Mlangeni District Hospital, formerly Zola-Jabulani Hospital, has once again been thrust into the spotlight for its lack of care and adequate psychiatric facilities.

This comes after Thabang Xaba, a 20-year-old schizophrenic patient, slit his throat after being admitted to the Soweto hospital on Monday. Thabang was rushed to the Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital in a critical state.

His mother, Hummy Xaba, said the hospital had failed to keep him restrained or sedated after his admission.

She said he had been fine until Sunday, when he appeared to be having a relapse, prompting Xaba to take him to the Lilian Ngoyi Community Clinic in Diepkloof Zone 6 where they were referred to the hospital, on arrival the pair was told to wait in the emergency ward when they arrived at 1am on Monday.

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"They could see that I was having a problem because Thabang was not well at the time. They didn't sedate him or even restrain him because his behaviour was erratic. But at 2pm a doctor attended to us and admitted him before telling me to go home."

She said all the while, Thabang had been delusional and hallucinating.

Barely two hours after her departure from the hospital, she received a call informing her to return because of an emergency that required her attention.

"They weren't telling me what was wrong with my son. When I got to the hospital, I was told that Thabang had cut his own throat. The nurses said he was in a ward with another patient who handed him a knife," Xaba said.

A nurse who spoke to Sowetan on condition of anonymity said the hospital experienced problems with mental health patients. "It is not clear if the knife was brought into the hospital by another patient or if it was brought by one of the nurses with their lunch packs. But I know that a patient had a knife and injured himself."

Xaba said Thabang slit one of his major arteries and had to undergo an operation to repair it.

"The hospital and its staff were negligent because I detailed Thabang's condition on a consent form before I left."

DA Gauteng h ealth spokesman Jack Bloom said this was not the first time the hospital has found itself in a predicament involving mental health problems.

The Gauteng department of health's Lesemang Matuka acknowledged that the hospital does not have the capacity to care for psychiatric patients due to infrastructure challenges.

"Though we currently have psychiatric patients in our institution, the patient was among those waiting to go to South Rand because we had no available beds for admission," he said, adding that Thabang had been restrained on one hand and one foot.

"The hospital allows no weapons in the vicinity and as such there's an investigation underway to assess how the knife got to the ward," Matuka said.