Legal Articles and Guides

Asylum seeker Alem Bazabe Ereselo – who was refused treatment at Helen Joseph Hospital – has managed to secure a draft order that will allow her to continue to receive the tri-weekly dialysis she requires to stay alive.

Lawyers for thousands of gold miners afflicted by silicosis or tuberculosis this week asked the Gauteng High Court to approve a R5bn settlement agreement, signed with five mining companies, as 'fair, reasonable and adequate'.

Limpopo's Health Department, already facing R4.3b in medical negligence claims, is now having to investigate a claim that a newborn's arm had been broken at birth at one of its hospitals, reports News24.

Moira Rodinis (85), who is going blind, is fighting her medical aid to be allowed access to a drug called Eylea that will reduce fluid build-up in her eyes, caused by age-related macular degeneration.

Alleged office gossip that an employee at a government entity was ‘infected with the HIV virus’ and spreading it because she was promiscuous forced her to institute a R2m defamation case against the ‘gossiper'. A report in The Star notes the parties are not named to safeguard the identity of the alleged victim.

The Health Professions Council (HPCSA) has suffered yet another defeat in its protracted battles with Dr Wouter Basson, according to Rapport. The Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) dismissed the HPCSA’s application for leave to appeal a judgment ordering the recusal of two tribunal members who found him guilty of unethical conduct during the apartheid era in December 2013.

A Durban judge has ordered KZN Health MEC, Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo, to pay about R500 000 to a mother who sued for medical negligence after her son was born with ‘the worst case’ of cerebral palsy five years ago. Her son is paralysed, blind and possibly deaf, but the Department of Health refused to accept blame, notes a Sunday Times report.

The Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) has ruled that Gauteng’s Health MEC, Dr Gwen Ramokgopa, is to pay for all damages as a result of the death of local rugby league player Zacharius Johannes de Lange at the Steve Biko Hospital.

Policing and prosecution of offences relating to possession of or dealing in ecstasy are likely to change as a technical legal challenge to the outlawing of the ‘club drug’ in SA makes its way through the court system.

Eastern Cape High Court (Port Elizabeth) Acting Judge Nicholas Mullins has heard that a cascade of events that left a newborn baby with severe brain injuries was preventable by the administration of a medical product easily available to a paediatrician.

The parents of a girl – now aged nine – are claiming more than R20m in damages from the Gauteng Health Department after the child was exposed to too much oxygen at birth, leading to her blindness, says a report in The Star.

Twenty-two former underground miners are claiming more than R80m in damages from Sasol Coal after they contracted serious lung and other diseases allegedly as a result of years of inhaling coal dust while working in underground coal mines.

Euthanasia remains ‘in the fog of debate’ in SA legal circles and has been debated both before and since the constitutional dispensation arrived along with democracy. The debate, says Werksmans Attorneys’ Neil Kirby, was recently ‘revived’ by the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) ruling in Stransham-Ford v Minister of Justice and Correctional Services, and a subsequent decision, on appeal, by the SCA in Minister of Justice and Correctional Services and Others v Estate Late James Stransham-Ford and Others.

A gynaecologist who was sentenced to five years direct imprisonment for the death of a patient due to labour complications plans to petition the SCA to appeal his conviction and sentence after the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) confirmed the findings of the eMalahleni Regional Court.

The KZN Department of Health appears to be heading for another legal showdown when the head of surgery from the strife-torn Ngwelazana Hospital returns to his job, which has already been given to someone else, suggests a Sunday Tribune report.