"For several months, our nurses have been baffled to find a dead
 patient in the same bed every Friday morning" a spokeswoman for
 the Pelonomi Hospital  (Free State, South Africa) told reporters.
 "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."
 
 "However, further inquiries have now revealed the cause of these
 deaths. It seems 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.
 Further, the Free State Health and Welfare Department is
 arranging for an electrician to fit an extra socket, so there
 should be no repetition of this incident. The enquiry is now
 closed."
 
 from (Cape Times, 6/13/96)
 BTW, the headline of the newspaper story was, "Cleaner Polishes
 Off Patients."

Wil Stark, wstark04 (at) pobox _dot_com

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