A WOMAN in Ndola has sued the Ndola Teaching Hospital for wrongly diagnosing her with breast cancer.
Violet Mtonga is demanding that the court should order for special damages of medical expenses relating to various tests, examinations and transport costs altogether amounting to K8,425.
In a statement of claim filed in the Ndola High Court registry, Mtonga stated that in 2016, she felt a lump in her right breast and went to the hospital where a biopsy was taken.
Mtonga claims that she was then was advised that the removal of the whole breast was the only treatment followed by chemotherapy radiation at the Cancer Diseases Hospital in Lusaka.
She said upon the doctor’s advice, she consented to a total mastectomy of her right breast.
Mtonga contends that after the operation, doctors from Firm A were presented with two contradictory reports, with the earlier stating that there was cancer and the later showing that there was no cancer.
She stated that when she went to the cancer diseases hospital in Lusaka, a doctor could not attend to her as the documents she was given from Ndola Teaching Hospital and Firm A lacked details and was sent back to Ndola to undergo more tests.
Mtonga stated that subsequent medical tests showed no presence of any cancer and she had since not received any treatment relating to the alleged cancer.
She claims that the diagnosis made on November 13, 2017 was that she was suffering from invasive ductal carcinoma and that cancer was a misdiagnosis, a mistake no reasonably qualified professional could have made.
“The senior medical superintendent and the Attorney General and their doctors in Firm A and those in the Ndola laboratory owed the plaintiff a duty of care to offer the plaintiff safe treatment,” she stated in her claim.