My journey began in earnest in January 2016 at a public meeting called by the Life Esidimeni Randfontein facility. It took place following a holiday we had taken, as a family (my five kids, my husband and I), a holiday, we desperately needed having come to terms with my sister Virginia’s condition of Alzheimer’s disease and getting used to her need to be in the Life Esidimeni mental health facility on a full-time basis.
This new normal had taken a serious psychological toll on us as a family, but more so on Shanice, her daughter. Our only comfort was the fact that she was getting the help she needed and deserved, and she was in a good facility.
The inquest into the deaths of 144 mental healthcare users who were moved out of Life Esidimeni by the Gauteng government in 2015 and 2016 will begin in the North Gauteng high court on 19 July 2021, the NPA announced on Monday.
Relatives of the patients hope the inquest, which will determine causes of death, will finally lead to criminal prosecutions.
No one has been criminally charged for the deaths despite former deputy chief justice Dikgang Moseneke’s arbitration award finding that the Gauteng health department’s decision to move the patients stemmed “from the arrogant and irrational use of public power”.
Witnesses at the arbitration testified that patients were sent to under-resourced and ill-equipped NGOs that lacked the ability to provide basic care or, in some cases, even feed the mental healthcare users.
PHOTO: News24/File
Lawyers representing the families of Life Esidimeni victims hope the upcoming inquest into the deaths will lead to criminal prosecutions.
Despite 2 000 psychiatric patients being moved from Life Esidimeni facilities to poorly-equipped non-governmental organisations (NGOs), which led to the death of 144 people, no one has been found criminally liable. The patients died of hunger, neglect and dehydration.
Attorney for the families, Sasha Stevenson, told News24 that the team hoped to finally secure criminal prosecutions in the matter. There’s more to this story Subscribe to News24 and get access to our
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In a recent article in
Daily Maverick, “Health budget slashed despite vaccine commitments” (26 February 2021), authors Daniel McLaren, Mbali Baduza, Sasha Stevenson and Julia Chaskalson from Section 27 rightly lament the slashing of the latest public health budgets, forced upon Treasury under the weight of the precarious prospects the country now faces.
Their concerns about inadequacies in providing access to quality healthcare for the poorest and most vulnerable in our society is without any doubt laudable and they deserve commendation for their continued efforts.
As a cure for these funding problems, they fervently call for the advancement of the National Health Insurance (NHI). The problem, however, with supporting the government’s NHI policy is that it remains, as it has from when the green paper was published in 2011, a red herring.
What SA s Covid-19 experience tells us about NHI news24.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from news24.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.