Legal Articles and Guides

Some patients in the public sector wait longer than seven years to undergo procedures and the backlog in state hospitals for procedures is now in excess of 170 000, Health Minister Joe Phaahla revealed in a parliamentary response.

‘I am extremely angry, but not shocked, by the utterances of Limpopo Health MEC, Phophi Ramathuba,’ says multi-award-winning public health practitioner Dr Shakira Choonara, adding: ‘Having watched her arrogantly berating a patient, I cannot even bear to call her by her title.’

An amendment to the Maintenance Act to blacklist maintenance defaulters with credit bureaus is on the cards, says a Cape Times report.

While it is legal to grow cannabis in your garden and light up a smoke at home, it is a definite no-no when it comes to a grow club, says a Cape Times report.

The Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg) has granted Health Squared Medical Scheme leave to apply for voluntary liquidation on 27 September 2022, but has yet to decide on the industry regulator’s urgent application to place the scheme under curatorship.

The parents of two Cape Town boys are grappling with the emotional and legal fallout after discovering that their sons – now aged 14 – were swapped at birth at a city hospital. Western Cape authorities last week confirmed that an inquiry was launched last year.

A group of kidney specialists is trying to delay the liquidation of Health Squared Medical Scheme by two months, arguing that the troubled scheme has enough funds to cover patients while they secure appropriate alternative cover.

While Limpopo Health MEC Dr Phophi Ramathuba has been praised by some for berating a patient in front of her entourage, some professionals and health bodies have labelled her a bully who used the wrong platform to address issues, bringing the profession into disrepute.

Tembisa Hospital bosses splurged R500 000 on a shipment of skinny jeans – purchased while SA was in the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic and just weeks before a third wave strained medical facilities to breaking point, claims a News24 report.

Whether Jacob Zuma is in fact terminally ill and whether his ally and former Correctional Services head Arthur Fraser exercised powers he did not have in law when he summarily dismissed a recommendation by the Medical Parole Advisory Board that the former President did not qualify for medical parole were central issues before the SCA yesterday.

A part-time call centre agent and her sound engineer husband landed Tembisa Hospital contracts worth nearly R30m in the space of a month – part of a mammoth extraction network uncovered by murdered whistle-blower Babita Deokaran, reports News24.

‘In 2019, nearly 18% of households could not access enough nutritious food for a healthy and productive life. Child stunting remains stubbornly high, affecting 27% of children under five (double the global average). And 10% of children are either wasted (thin for their height) or underweight.’

SA’s most valuable hospital group, Mediclinic, has reached terms with its biggest shareholder, Remgro, on a buyout offer that values its shares at £3.7bn, reports BusinessLIVE.

The CCMA is conducting an arbitration hearing to ascertain if a hospital acted unfairly towards a Muslim medical practitioner over her religious beliefs of keeping her arms covered, reports IoL.

Ten SA doctors have told right-to-die activist Sean Davison that they, too, have helped people die. Davison told the Cape Town Press Club that some doctors were fighting for legal euthanasia as they stared death in the face daily while treating gravely ill patients.