GOVERNMENT can be taken to court if it fails to intervene in the growing public health crisis where foreigners, and some South Africans, are blocked from entering health facilities by vigilante groups in Durban and Johannesburg.
Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) yesterday said that the government has an obligation to treat anyone, whether they are citizens or not.
“If the police and other state institutions do not urgently intervene, a court of law can be approached for an order to restrain and interdict whoever is turning people away from health care facilities,” it noted.
For the past two months, organisations called March and March as well as Operation Dudula, have blocked the entrance to healthcare facilities, asking people to show their South African IDs before deciding whether they can get medical help.
Many people have been without sorely needed medication for weeks and refugee leaders in Durban say that at least two people have died because they failed to get the treatment they needed.
“When it comes to medical care, especially general care and emergency medical care, the law does not differentiate between citizens and foreigners. Everyone has the right to have access to healthcare services. The law does not allow us to watch people die of medical conditions, or see them get infected with communicable diseases like COVID-19, TB, Polio,” the LHR said.
Many of the foreigners in Durban have turned to the clinic at the Dennis Hurley Centre (DHC) for help. However, Raymond Perrier the director of the DHC says it's not just foreigners, but South Africans, especially the homeless who are turned away.
He said even people from the Eastern Cape are scared to go to public health facilities and have turned to their clinic for help.
“We're dealing with people who have appointed themselves as gatekeepers to the hospital, and have no legal basis for doing so. There is no reason legally why foreign nationals can't access a government clinic. The police and the hospital authorities, they're not complicit, but they are passive in the face of this. So the solution is simple: you enact the law. That's why we have a law.”
Perrier said some of their overseas donors have been “horrified” and questioned why the police and the Department of Health would not resolve the matter.
He says this could have an impact on future funding.
“When other overseas donors are looking at whether and how they support health care in South Africa, and they hear these kinds of stories, they're going to shrug their shoulders and say, we don't help organisations that tolerate this kind of behavior. And then, of course, the people will suffer even more; it's always the poorest people who are most affected,” said Perrier.