Human Rights Commission failed to act on Esidimeni patient transfers
7 February 2017
Lives could have been saved if the SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) had acted seriously on a complaint laid in March last year concerning the transfer of mental health patients from Life Healthcare Esidimeni to unlicensed NGOs.
Annie Robb of the Ubuntu Centre, an organization of people with psychosocial disabilities, wrote to SAHRC Commissioner Bokankatla Malatji on 15 March 2016 requesting "immediate urgent attention" concerning the potential violation of the rights of those affected by the Gauteng Health Department's cancellation of the Esidimeni contract.
Ms Robb says that the SAHRC did nothing and that Malatji, who chairs the SAHRC's Section 11 Disability Committee, barely remembered the issue at a July meeting of this committee.
It was only on 24 August that she was phoned by a SAHRC legal officer to say they would assign a number to her complaint, and she told him "people are going to die if you do nothing".
In September the SAHRC joined her complaint with a complaint concerning the Precious Angels NGO in Pretoria which it visited and found abandoned. But this was only after the Health MEC had disclosed 36 deaths and the Health Ombudsman had been appointed to investigate.
Professor Michael Stein, the Executive Director of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability, resigned in protest from the Section 11 Disability Committee.
He wrote in an angry email to Ms Robb in October that "The SAHRC was put on advance notice by you and your group in March and even by me in person in March 2016, about the deadly and inevitable results that would happen if they stood by and did not act, and yet they chose to do nothing."
It is hugely disappointing that the SAHRC and Commissioner Malatji in particular failed to act speedily to save the lives of the most vulnerable patients imperiled by the reckless transfer to unsuitable NGOs.
The human rights of the 94 dead patients were ignored by too many people, including the Human Rights Commission which could have prevented the deaths if they had acted determinedly in March last year.
This calls into question the SAHRC's competence to conduct a country-wide investigation into human rights compliance in mental health treatment, as recommended by the Health Ombudsman.
The DA will insist that the SAHRC account for its inexcusable inaction to Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Justice and Correctional Services.
Issued by Jack Bloom, DA Gauteng Shadow MEC for Health, 7 February 2017
