My day started calmly enough, with a ward round with a Paediatric consultant who makes monthly visits to our hospital. She’s a lovely Cuban lady who has been working at a nearby government hospital for nearly 20 years. She sees my patients who are either not sick enough to be transferred to Polokwane, or so sick that there is little more that can be done for them. I really enjoy her ward rounds, and have learnt so much from her in the last 9 months. Also, it’s very reassuring to have a doctor with years of experience agree with your management plans. If I ever get bored of long ward rounds when I return to my rightful position at the bottom of the medical ladder, I will remember the pressures of being the only doctor responsible for 30 incredibly sick children, and thank my lucky stars.
Anyway, after the round, as I was walking her to her car, I heard the familiar sound of a helicopter hovering, and thought that James had called for one for a patient in Casualty. But when I looked up, I realised that it wasn’t the usual red air ambulance, but a green helicopter belonging to Kruger National Park! It circulated above the hospital for a good few minutes whilst the drivers of the many cars who use the helipad as a car park moved their cars to safety. As the usual crowds gathered, I found myself the only doctor at the landing site, and so went up to a ranger, who had hopped out of the helicopter, to ask what the matter was. After all, if they had a helicopter, why not head straight to Polokwane?
The ranger explained that the patient was stable, but had gunshot wounds to the arm and leg. The patient was in fact a poacher, who had been shot because he was shooting at the Park officials who had found him! The ranger was being incredibly civil to this chap, I thought, especially considering the patient had been shooting at him with an AK-47 not 2 hours earlier.
We got the patient/poacher to Casualty, and the full story started to unfold. He was incredibly dehydrated, but otherwise quite well (if we don’t count the 3 entry and exit wounds). We found out that he had left Mozambique last week, armed with said AK-47, and had been in Kruger since then. He’d killed 4 rhinos in that time, and was onto his 5th when he was tracked down by rangers on patrol. The nurses took an immediate dislike to him (South Africans are very proud of their parks, and rightly so) and even asked if I would suture his wounds without local anaesthetic! (I did use anaesthetic…) He was a pretty nasty piece of work, and continued to rile the nurses up by boasting about how rich poaching has made him – he has 5 wives and many hundred cows – dispelling the myth, at least in his case, that poachers are driven by the desperation of abject poverty.
After all the drama had died down and I was having lunch, I got a phone call from a guy from the Ministry of Environmental Affairs and Tourism. He said that there had been a warrant for this chap’s arrest for nearly 3 years, and that he was an incredibly violent and dangerous man. He told me to make sure he was in cuffs and with a policeman at all times – because the patient knew he would be going away for a long time, there was a chance the desperation could make him do something stupid like try and make a run for it, or even try and take a hostage. This information would have been somewhat more useful had it come before I spent an hour alone in a cubicle with him, with no police escort, with a trolley full of lancets, needles and scissors, debriding and suturing his wounds.
Luckily, he didn’t try anything funny, and we got the police in to put him in shackles. The guy I spoke to on the phone from the Ministry arrived later in the evening, accompanied by armed guards, to take the patient away for interrogation. He was so incredibly pleased to have this guy in custody, he gave me his number and said that any time I wanted to go to Kruger, I should just give him a call and I would get extra-special treatment! If only they’d found this guy 9 months ago…
