Pretoria - Operation Dudula supporters picketing outside Kalafong hospital in Atteridgeville yesterday threatened to roll out their action across the country.
The group said their campaign would prevent suspected foreigners from assessing medical treatment from other hospitals.
For almost three weeks, protesters have been hurling threats against foreigners and stopping them from using the health-care centre.
On Friday, the Department of Health obtained a court interdict from the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, ordering them to disperse from the facility.
However, in defiance of the interdict about 10 people picketed again yesterday outside the hospital. Police were called but they only read out a court interdict to the group and left.
Operation Dudula representative Dan Radebe said: “We are rolling out the campaign throughout the country from today (yesterday) and we are carrying on.”
He said supporters of the operation were on standby to picket outside various hospitals. “All that we are fighting for is for people to respect our laws,” Radebe said.
Hospital spokesperson Given Makhuvele said the Department of Health interdicted a group of people from threatening, preventing and denying patients deemed to be non-South African and employees at the hospital from accessing the facility to receive medical attention and to administer care, respectively.
He said the department cautioned the public against obstructing access to health care services which “is a fundamental human right”.
“The department will not hesitate to call on law enforcement to act against those who put the lives of patients and staff at risk,” he said.
Despite the court interdict, a small group of protesters tried to prevent patients from gaining access at the hospital on Monday.
Makhuvele said the police responded swiftly to arrest the situation and “since there is a court interdict in place, the police served the protesters with the court interdict and they eventually dispersed”.
Doctors Without Borders in South Africa expressed worries that protests preventing patients, including migrants, from accessing the medical care smacked of xenophobia.
“These actions must be rejected and should trigger urgent action by health authorities and leaders to protect access to health care for all.”
The organisation said protesting Operation Dudula supporters chanted threatening statements through loud hailers and prevented many from entering the facility.
Sibusiso Ndlovu, health promotion supervisor for Doctors Without Borders in Tshwane, said several people were turned away by the protesters based on their appearance and accent.
Ndlovu said the protesters put hospital staff under immense pressure with demands that all foreigners be removed. Hostility to serving migrants in the country’s health facilities “has been intensifying, fuelled by inflammatory and political statements from government officials including Limpopo Health MEC Dr Phophi Ramathuba, recently recorded berating a Zimbabwean patient in a health facility, claiming that migrants are overburdening the health system”.
Dr Tasanya Chinsamy, medical activity manager for Doctors Without Borders in Tshwane said: “One major concern as the politicisation of health care expands is that serious notifiable diseases could go unrecorded and untreated, which will inhibit the public health care system’s overall capacity to contain infectious disease outbreaks.”
One of the patients denied care at Kalafong was a 37-week pregnant migrant woman with high blood pressure, who instead had to seek help from a local clinic.
Through its operations in Tshwane, Doctors Without Borders said it had recorded several cases where migrants with a legitimate right of access to health have been denied care.
“Many of these instances involve access to maternal and child health, guaranteed under South Africa’s Constitution and through various laws and healthcare policies.”
Radebe said: “We understand that they have a code of ethics to save lives. We are not against that. But upon discharging those illegal migrants – do you discharge them on to the street or as the CEO do you summon the police and immigration (officers) to hand them over.”
Pretoria News