Health minister Aaron Motsoaledi is perfectly within his rights to complain about unscrupulous lawyers who cook up fake medical negligence claims or siphon off the awards made to victims of error and neglect.
But he needs to be equally frank about the fact that far too many patients are harmed by the very health system in which they seek care. There is no shortage of evidence for this: investigations by the health ombudsman, the SA human rights commission and political parties have all revealed shocking accounts of patient abuse and neglect in public health facilities.
Earlier this week the minister told parliament that provincial health departments had paid out R7.5bn in medical negligence claims in the past five years, R2.4bn of it in Gauteng. These sums are not budgeted for, which means they are clawed out of funds originally set aside for the things public hospitals and clinics need to provide decent care — from medicines and equipment to sheets and soap — and risk worsening the state of things.
The tragedy is that none of this is new. In 2015 the health department hosted a summit on medical negligence, sounded the alarm about problems confronting both the public and private healthcare sector, and proposed legal reforms to limit the state’s liabilities.
Motsoaledi is back in the health portfolio for a third term and should be well versed in the issues. He could do worse than leave the dodgy law firms to the Special Investigating Unit, crack the whip on failing provincial health departments, and put some pressure on his counterpart in justice to revive work on the State Liability Amendment Bill.
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