For the past three weeks, patients and employees who are foreign nationals and those suspected to be foreign nationals have been barred from entering Kalafong Hospital in Atteridgeville, west of Pretoria.
Members of Operation Dudula in Greater Tshwane have been protesting outside the provincial tertiary facility since August 4, demanding that the hospital stop providing services to foreign nationals and to remove people from other countries who are employed at the facility.
Doctors without Borders (MSF) said some of the people were turned away based on their appearance and accent.
Operation Dudula said they had noticed an influx of foreign nationals in the hospital, which had led them to protest.
The hospital on Friday obtained an interdict to stop the protesters from turning away patients and employees they believed to be foreign nationals.
But Operation Dudula won’t have it, saying they have not been served with the papers and vowed to intensify the protest.
The protest started two weeks before Limpopo health MEC Phophi Ramathuba’s rant about how foreign nationals were burdening the province’s health system.
Ramathuba has been facing a backlash after a video of her asking an alleged undocumented patient at Bela Bela Regional Hospital about her nationality went viral on social media.
The woman, who is believed to be from Zimbabwe, had gone to the Limpopo facility for orthopaedic surgery last week.
During her interaction with the patient, Ramathuba said the woman should have been treated in her home country because foreigners were burdening SA’s healthcare systems.
She ordered the hospital not to discharge her until she settles her bill.
Sowetan understands that the patient was released on August 18 after the video was taken.
Kalafong Hospital CEO Dr Sello Matjila on Sunday told Sowetan that staff members who were foreign nationals feared for their lives.
He said his biggest worry was that even when police were called to disperse the protesters, the hospital was dismissed. “We would call the police but they were not helpful.
“They said they would not be able to act until there was a court interdict and this was frustrating. My worry is that these things have the potential of taking a different turn,” Matjila said.
He said the hospital and the department of health had approached the courts to stop the protesters as lives were in danger.
“As a result, the hospital is not operating at full complement of the staff. This threatens the lives of patients that need urgent medical assistance and health care.
“Furthermore, seriously ill patients, including pregnant women, are refused entrance to the hospital,” Matjila's affidavit reads in part.
“I respectfully submit that this is a matter of life and death for the patients and medical personnel... With this unwarranted behaviour persisting, the patients are prejudiced as they are blocked access to the hospital and they cannot receive the necessary medical treatment.”
International humanitarian body Doctors without Borders (MSF) has condemned the protest, labelling it xenophobic.
Health promotion supervisor for MSF in Tshwane Sibusiso Ndlovu said the protesters were putting the hospital staff under immense pressure with their demand.
“They [Operation Dudula] have even demanded that critically ill patients who are migrants must be ‘unplugged and taken out’,” she said.
Ndlovu said one of the patients denied care at the hospital was a 37-weeks pregnant migrant with high blood pressure who had to seek help from a local clinic.
Dr Tasanya Chinsamy, medical activity manager for MSF in Tshwane, said clinics were not equipped to provide tertiary care for complex cases such as these, which require access to a specialist and certain medications that are only available at hospital level.
“When patients are denied the appropriate level of care initially their conditions often worsen and they return as emergency patients.
“Their risk of becoming more ill or dying is thus greatly increased as is the cost to the government. Nobody benefits and the most vulnerable suffer disproportionately regardless of their nationality or legal status,” she said.
Operation Dudula Greater Tshwane regional secretary Pat Mokgalusi said the hospital should find them and serve them with the interdict.
“What we saw was a poster on the hospital’s notice board and we disregarded it completely,” said Mokgalusi.
“If the hospital cannot prohibit undocumented nationals from receiving services we will do it for them. We need to protect our resources otherwise we will end up with a collapsed health system.
“Other countries have strict laws, what makes South Africa so special for us to want to accommodate everyone?”
The region’s chairperson, Puleng Tau, said: “They [foreign nationals] must go back to their countries. They are the reason we get bad service in hospitals, long queues, overcrowding and it makes nurses look like they are not working when they are just struggling with numbers [of patients]. We are not backing down.”
sibiyan@sowetan.co.za
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