Foreign national dies before receiving life-saving chronic treatment

01 Feb 2016 | Admin Author

Lawyers For Human Rights says it's outraged at a law that prevented a foreign national who's a refugee in the country, from receiving life-saving medical treatment.

The organisation will have to withdraw it's urgent application on the North Gauteng High Court on Tuesday morning, after their client, 27-year-old Ethiopian refugee, Badesa Fokora, died while waiting for the matter to be heard.

LHR attorney, Patricia Erasmus, says Fokora was told by the Helen Joseph Hospital in Johannesburg that while his condition was life threatening, the hospital could not help him because of the National Health Act.

She says Fokora was told that the chronic renal treatment programme involved dialysis and an organ transplant but that, as a non-South African citizen, he did not qualify for placement.

Erasmus says in their view, the Act is unconstitutional.

Even when his family offered to contribute to the cost of the procedure, the hospital said they were not allowed to do it because the programme was not available to foreign nationals.

According to the National Health Act only citizens and permanent residents can be placed on the programme. However, the Refugee Act clearly states that refugees be treated like citizens on medical issues.

LHR was approached for help after he was refused placement on the programme.

LHR had planned to challenge this decision and compel the Minister of Health to exercise discretion to have him placed on the programme – something that is well within his powers to do. The case would have also dealt with the exclusion of refugees from medical treatment in a second part of the application.

“LHR is disappointed that a young man has died under preventable circumstances. The National Health Act is clear that the Minister of Health has a discretion to order chronic renal treatment to a foreign national. The manner in which the Department has treated Mr Fokora is a gross and unjustifiable violation of his rights to health care, dignity and ultimately life,” said LHR’s Patricia Erasmus.

This exclusion is unconstitutional because it does not distinguish between refugees and other non-nationals. Refugees flee persecution in their home countries and for that reason cannot return because they would be in danger of further harm. A refugee also cannot return to their country of origin for medical treatment because doing so would cause them to lose their refugee status in South Africa. It is for these reasons that South Africa’s Refugees Act provides that recognised refugees have the same right to basic medical services as a citizen

She told Algoa FM News that she believe's that Fokora's family do have the right to approach the courts on the basis of wrongful death.