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Limpopo health MEC Dr Phophi Ramathuba’s comments on the issue of healthcare of foreign nationals has fueled “xenophobic rhetoric” across South Africa’s facilities, according to international non-governmental organisation (NGO), Doctors Without Borders.
The organisation said on Thursday, that a group purporting to be part of the Operation Dudula movement have been preventing patients from entering Kalafong Hospital in Pretoria for several weeks.
Pickets outside the hospital have been ongoing for the past three weeks, with protesters demanding that all foreign nationals be removed from the facility, according to the NGO.
“They have even demanded that critically ill patients who are migrants must be ‘unplugged’ and taken out,” Tshwane’s health promotion supervisor for Doctors Without Borders, Sibusiso Ndlovu, said.
Ndlovu revealed that several people were being turned away by the protestors “based on their appearance and accent”.
The NGO said it was of the view that hostility to serving immigrants in South Africa’s health facilities was intensifying.
This, according to the organisation, has been exacerbated by Ramathuba, who recently blamed the lack of hospital service delivery on the burden of having to treat foreign nationals.
In a video clip that has made headlines this week, Ramathuba was heard telling an alleged Zimbabwean patient that she was confined to the Bela-Bela Hospital in Limpopo until she paid her medical bills.
While Ramathuba has been criticised over the incident by some, the Limpopo Health MEC has doubled down on her views.
Dr Tasanya Chinsamy, medical activity manager for Doctors Without Borders in Tshwane, warned that the consequences would be felt across the country “if health workers are placed under pressure to behave as immigration officers”.
“One major concern as the politicisation of healthcare expands is that serious notifiable diseases could go unrecorded and untreated, which will inhibit the public healthcare system’s overall capacity and ability to contain infectious disease outbreaks,” Chinsamy said.
“When patients are denied the appropriate level of care initially, their conditions often worsen and they return as emergency patients.
“Their risk of becoming more ill or dying is thus greatly increased, as is the cost to the government. Nobody benefits and the most vulnerable suffer disproportionately regardless of their nationality or legal status,” she added.
Doctors Without Borders further said there was an increasing trend in Gauteng hospitals, whereby immigrants are denied access to services by facility staff.
The NGO revealed that it has recorded a number of cases where legal immigrants were being denied care.
“Many of these instances involve access to maternal and child health, which is guaranteed under South Africa’s constitution and through various laws and healthcare policies,” the organisation said in a statement.
The organisation has called on health authorities to intervene.
Since the start of the year, Operation Dudula has been targeting illegal and undocumented migrants in areas with a high density of foreigners in South Africa.
Operation Dudula could not be reached for comment.
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