The Health Ombudsman, Malegapuru Makgoba, says a total of 94 mentally ill patients had died as a result of a decision by the Gauteng Health Department to cancel the contract with Life Esidimeni and move the patients to 27 NGO's.
Delivering his findings of a probe into the scandal, Professor Makgoba, said this number was still a provisional one because "there are other agencies that are investigating this process like the SA Police, there are corpses still in mortuaries that have not been identified and we don't know whether they form part of this and not all the information we got from the NGO's were full, some were actually reluctant to give information and some families are now coming out of the woodworks, sending us names of their relatives that they want us to investigate."
"I suspect the number is higher than that and that is why I had entitled my report 94 Silent Deaths and Still Counting," he said.
Makgoba said that there second major finding was that all the 27 NGO's where patients were transferred from Life Esidimeni had been found to be operating under invalid licenses.
"In short I'm saying that the Gauteng Department of Health took mentally ill patients from a licensed institution and put them into 27 unlicensed or NGO's that operated with invalid licenses. And you can see how unlawful that must be for a provincial department to do that to a group of vulnerable people about whom we must actually take the utmost care and look after," said Makgoba.
"So, 27 of those NGO's were unlawful and therefore anybody who died under those circumstances died under unlawful circumstances. It's that simple," he said.
The Health Ombudsman said that 80% of the deaths occurred in five complexes. He said although there were no deaths at the other institutions they were still operating illegally.
Professor Makgoba said that he also found that "a high level decision to terminate the contract was taken precipitiously and this was followed by a programme of action with disastrous outcomes or consequences, including the deaths mentioned.
Makgoba said he identified three key players in this process, namely the Gauteng MEC for Health, Qedani Mahlangu and two top officials including the HOD.
"I said in my report that their fingerprints are peppered throught the report as to what actions were happening. "The programme of action that they undertook was described by almost every stakeholder as chaotic, shambles, rushed and in a hurry," he said.
Makgoba said this evidence was given by 73 "voices" that came to give evidence.
He said that there was also prima facie evidence of Human Rights violations and "I have listed those in my findings in detail." He said he also listed a series of close to 15 actions and decisions that "I've classified as negligent and reckless decision and actions that were taken by either the MEC or HOD or jointly or by the Gauteng Department," he said.
Commenting on the findings, Health Minister, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, said he was "distressed and angry" by the findings. "It goes beyond embarrassment," he said.
