For several months, nurses were baffled to find a dead patient in the same bed every Friday morning in the Mbabane Government Hospital.

There was no apparent cause for any of the deaths and extensive checks on the air conditioning system and a search for possible bacterial infection, failed to reveal any clues.

It was then revealed that every Friday morning a cleaner would enter the ward, remove the plug that powered the patient's life support system, plug her floor polisher into the vacant socket, then go about her business. When she had finished her chores, she would plug the life support machine back in and leave, unaware that the patient was now dead!


She could not, after all, hear the screams and eventual death rattle over the whirring of her polisher!

"We are sorry and have sent a strong letter to the cleaner in question.
Furthermore, the Swazi Health and Welfare Department is arranging for an electrician to fit an extra socket, so there should be no repetition of this incident. The inquiry is now closed."

Courtesy of The Times of Swaziland