WHY WAS CORRIE SANDERS TURNED AWAY FROM STEVE BIKO HOSPITAL?

An inquiry is needed into why former boxing champion Corrie Sanders was turned away from the Steve Biko Academic Hospital in Pretoria after being shot by armed robbers at a Brits restaurant (see Beeld report.)

According his family he was refused treatment because he was shot outside the Pretoria area.

It is possible that his life could have been saved if he was treated at the specialist facilities at Steve Biko, rather than the lower-level Kalafong Hospital which has a poor reputation.

It is completely unlawful for a hospital to turn away a severely wounded patient based on where he sustained his injury.

Steve Biko chief executive Ernest Kenoshi has said that it was highly unlikely that his hospital would turn someone away simply because he was shot in another province.

But sources have told me that North West ambulances are regularly turned away from this hospital, and people often lie that they have been injured in Gauteng in order to get admitted there.

We need to know what the real situation is about treatment of patients injured outside Gauteng, and whether Sanders was denied high-level treatment that could have saved him.

Statement issued by Jack Bloom MPL, DA Gauteng Health Spokesman, September 25 2012

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