Photo: Gauteng Health Department A former director says court cases and provincial power prohibited national officials from stopping the Gauteng health department's deadly plans.
The former national head of mental health services Melvyn Freeman has broken years of silence over the LIfe Esidimeni tragedy.
Freeman was the national health department's chief director of noncommunicable diseases when the Gauteng health department decided to remove about 1 700 long-term state-funded patients out of private Life Esidimeni facilities. Patients were then placed mainly in ill-equipped and unlicensed NGOs, and at least 144 people died.
The Gauteng health department never informed Freeman, nor the national health department of its plans, a 2017 health ombud report revealed. Freeman has opened up about the experience in the latest edition of The Lancet Psychiatry medical journal:
"The owners of the NGOs were provided with 'line-ups' of mental healthcare users and were allowed to decide whom they wanted to take. This draws parallels with slave owners choosing their new 'possessions', he writes.
"The way people were moved..., where they were moved to, how they were treated and even the handling of bodies after death, suggests that the coordinators and enforcers of the project perceived mental health users as lesser human beings."
After the health department became aware of the Gauteng government's plans, the national health department's director-general Precious Matsoso also repeatedly requested that Gauteng mental health directorate and nurse Makgabo Manamela brief Freeman on the project. But Manamela never did, the ombud's report found.
"It is especially worrying that healthcare leadership and professionally-trained health workers could permit such things to happen. A few healthcare workers refused to participate," Freeman writes. "No professional is is obliged to carry out an instruction if it is unlawful in their judgement or is likely to lead to the death and injury of a person."
Read the full article here
Have something to say? Tweet or Facebook us on @Bhekisisa_MG
