A 25-year-old Melbourne man has been waiting more than three years for life-changing hip surgery after a car accident, despite his condition declining to the extent that he can no longer walk.
Ta Kwa Hei was involved in a car accident when he was 19. A Karen refugee who lives in Melbourne’s west, Hei wasn’t aware of the Transport Accident Commission or the fact that he might be able to claim assistance with any injuries through them, and he walked away from the site of the accident, in New South Wales, without going to hospital.
Over the following years, Hei experienced significant pain in both legs. He wasn’t able to run and had to stop playing soccer, which he loved.
When Utopia Refugee and Asylum Seeker Health opened in 2020, Hei made an appointment to have his hip condition investigated.
Hei had in fact fractured both his hips and developed avascular necrosis at the top of his thigh bone – bone-tissue death that can lead to bone collapse, which occurs when blood supply to the bone is cut off.
Hei was referred to the surgical department at Footscray hospital in May 2020 but was not seen by a surgeon until February last year. The orthopaedic surgeon who finally saw him classified his injury as a category three – the least urgent, for which you are expected to wait up to a year – and put him on the waiting list for surgery.
Nearly 14 months later, Hei still does not have a date for his surgery. His physical condition is far from stable: it has declined to the extent that he can no longer walk and requires either two crutches or a wheelchair to move around. His mental health has plummeted.
Since his first referral, he has also had to give up work and apply for jobseeker because he could no longer perform the lifting and moving required for the labouring jobs he had been doing.
Hei told Guardian Australia he is now stuck spending most of his days lying down in bed. “I can walk only around the house [and] I have to walk with a stick,” he said. “I can’t drive any more. I feel sad.
“As the unemployed, you are angry. You just want to get back to your life, but you have to wait.”
When Hei appealed to his local MP, the state Labor treasurer, Tim Pallas, for help in December, Pallas’s office told Hei to go back to his GP “as they may be in a position to expedite your place on the wait list”.
But Hei’s GP, Dr Lester Mascarenhas at Utopia, had already attempted to advocate for Hei with the hospital.
Mascarenhas told Guardian Australia Hei’s wait for surgery was “unacceptably long” and he was concerned Hei’s need for surgery had been misclassified.
A spokesperson for Western Health, which runs Footscray hospital, did not answer questions about Hei’s specific situation. “Referrals are received and triaged solely based on clinical need,” the spokesperson said.
“Patients are also clinically assessed to ensure that they are medically ready for surgery which involves addressing any comorbid medical conditions in order to safely perform their surgery.”
The spokesperson did not answer questions about the current wait times for category-three hip-related surgeries at hospital, saying instead that they had “performed more than 8,600 planned surgeries in this financial year – well above our average – which has had a positive impact on addressing waiting times for planned surgery for patients following the pandemic.”
Mascarenhas said he believed Hei was suffering a great injustice. “The cost to his mental and physical wellbeing has been substantial,” the GP said.
“Here is a young man who wants to work and contribute to society but has been held back for over three years due to our broken public healthcare system. Being told that there is no available date and he just has to keep waiting is simply not good enough.”
Pallas was approached for comment. A spokesperson for the Victorian government said: “We know it can be frustrating for people waiting for planned surgery and we empathise with people in this situation. We urge people to contact their GP or clinician should their condition deteriorate, so they can be reviewed and re-prioritised to a more urgent category if required.”
