Botched medical interventions by doctors from the KwaZulu-Natal Health Department resulted in R376 million being spent on lawsuits in 2008/2009 and R547m in 2009/2010.
A Sunday Tribune investigation has established that the provincial health department has had to fork out millions to compensate patients due to negligence by public-sector doctors.
Cases of alleged negligence in KwaZulu-Natal include:
- A baby born at King Edward VIII Hospital who was healthy on discharge died three days later because the baby had not passed meconium, which meant that a protocol had been ignored.
- Jayanthie Devi Sonny, who gave birth to a baby with Down Syndrome in November 2002, is suing the KwaZulu-Natal Health Department for R6.6m, saying she would have terminated the pregnancy if she had been told there was a risk of her child suffering any abnormality.
- A Durban man sued the health department last November for R700 000 after losing the use of his right hand following a botched surgical procedure. Roderick Skinner said he was admitted to Addington Hospital on December 4, 2007, to remove a benign tumour from his arm. During the surgery, a nerve in Skinner's arm was cut.
"The sole cause of Skinner's radial nerve being transected was due to negligence of the medical or surgical personnel at the hospital. They failed to carry out the surgical procedure correctly and applied poor or inappropriate surgical techniques," his claim states. The department is fighting the claim and denies the hospital was negligent.
In just two years, doctors in public hospitals have cost taxpayers more than R1 billion in lawsuits countrywide after botched operations left many patients fighting for their lives.
Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said he has called for an investigation into reasons for the increase in litigation, saying the amounts spent were unacceptable.
"We have heard about cases in which operations were done and surgical gloves or, in some cases, scissors, were left inside people, in public and private hospitals," the minister's spokesman, Fidel Hadebe, said yesterday.
Motsoaledi plans to launch an investigation into the "disconnect" between patients and medical staff because the crisis at provincial hospitals has resulted in a groundswell of complaints to the national Health Department.
On top of these shocking revelations, ambulance services are taking a long time to reach patients in distress, partly through poor management and the use of unsuitable vehicles.
Just three weeks into the new financial year, the department has already paid out R87m in medical legal bills with 294 cases pending.
Mpumalanga spent R19m last year on medically related legal bills compared to R666 643 in the 2008/2009 financial year. Last year Gauteng spent R10m on medical legal fees, up from R2.8m the previous year.
The Western Cape spent R6m and R4m, North West R1.7m and R11.5m. The Free State health department paid out R577 000 in medical legal fees last year and R916 000 the year before.
The Eastern Cape paid R8m in legal fees last year. The Northern Cape has spent R23m in legal fees since 2007. Limpopo refused to disclose what it has paid out in lawsuits and the provincial department's spokesman, Selby Makgotho, said the figures were "confidential".
Taxpayers are paying for the negligence of doctors who escape with little more than a slap on the wrist from the Health Professions Council of South Africa, their oversight body.
Motsoaledi has said that despite policies on patient care, which were visible on noticeboards and other suitable places, doctors and nurses were ignoring regulations.
Motsoaledi recently told Parliament's health portfolio committee he planned to commission an investigation into the reasons for the negligence and state of care in public hospitals.
The national Department of Health's acting deputy director general in charge of health planning and monitoring, Carol Marshall, has told Parliament it was necessary to instil values and ethics from the top of the medical profession. There was a need for accountability so that incorrect actions would have consequences.
Marshall noted that a survey on staff satisfaction gave a positive result; however, complaints from patients presented a different picture. "There appears to be a disconnect between staff satisfaction and patient complaints."