The South African Medical Association (Sama) chairman, Dr. Mvuyisi Mzukwa, was attacked while driving home from King Shaka International Airport over the weekend. The Health Ministry in Pretoria wished him a speedy recovery.

 

 

Dr. Sibongiseni Dhlomo, Deputy Minister of Health, visited Mzukwa at the Durban hospital where he is being treated.

“I was elated to discover him on his recovery bed and complimented him on his heroism in driving himself to the nearest hospital while bleeding and in pain to save his life.” ” If he had waited a little longer, his situation could have worsened,” Dhlomo explained.

Also, we’d like to thank the police, nursing staff, and emergency medical services for getting there quickly.

The Department of Health said it was working hard to make sure that emergency medical services workers across the country had the quickest response time possible by improving capacity and resource allocation.

In April, after a video went viral on social media, Mzukwa criticized the care of patients at the Rahima Moosa Hospital, a public health facility in Johannesburg. In the video, large groups of pregnant women who needed medical help were huddled on the floor.

Ashley Sauls, the MMC for health and social development for the City of Johannesburg, responded to the criticism on social media by saying that the hospital was full of undocumented migrants, many of whom lived far away from the facility.

Mzukwa said at the time that patients couldn’t expect hospitals in South Africa to be unfair to them.

“The government cannot expect clinicians to deter international patients. It is not our territory. As clinicians, if we encounter a patient at a hospital who requires medical care, we just provide that service without asking any questions. Mzukwa told IOL, “We are not the Department of Home Affairs.”

“We do not handle immigration or anything else.” We have no interest in knowing whether a patient is an asylum seeker or anything else. “Once you are admitted to the hospital and are ill, we only provide medical care.”