Too many South Africans suffer injuries at the hands of the public health system. In the past decade, the scale of the medical negligence claims levelled against the state has risen exponentially, threatening the stability of provincial health budgets.They reported contingent liabilities for medical negligence claims — the cost to the public purse if they were all successful — of R120.3bn in the 2021/2022 fiscal year, the majority of which were for severe birth injuries.
The reasons for the soaring medical-negligence claims are myriad: poor management, staff shortages, weak record keeping, an increasingly litigious public, the limited capacity of some provincial health departments to defend claims, and unscrupulous lawyers who cynically milk the state and siphon off funds intended for victims. The government has been sounding the alarm for years.
Earlier this month, the Eastern Cape health department did just that, obtaining a high court ruling that allows it to care for a child with cerebral palsy in its facilities and contract with the private sector when required, reducing the lump-sum settlement from more than R30m to just R2.1m. Given the snail’s pace at which the government’s legal reforms are moving, this well-considered ruling is welcome. The trouble is the doctors and nurses who harm these children are rarely held accountable. They bear no shame, and they keep their jobs. So we should remain sceptical of the state’s promises to care for the victims of medical negligence, and moves to send them back into the system that maimed them in the first place.