Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen
Let me start by expressing my most sincere gratitude to you for your prompt response to our invitation to this media event. Needless to say, you interrupted your Sunday afternoon to be here. I believe you did so out of acknowledgement of the extraordinary importance of this event to the health profession in particular but to all of South Africa in general.
The past few days have been very traumatic to all of us in this country. South Africans woke up to hear that the doctors to whom they have entrusted their lives, are not what they are not supposed to be. The words "bogus doctors" dominated media headlines for many days in succession.
Clearly many people were disturbed and those who believe that they or their beloved ones have been or might have been victims of these "bogus doctors" came out to pour their grief to the nation. These responses were of course reasonable and understandable, given that losing beloved ones is never an easy matter to accept, whatever the circumstances or conditions are.
In explaining what is happening in this very unfortunate and extraordinary event, the spokesperson of our supreme crime busters, the Hawks, Mr McIntosh Polela, went into over-gear.
Now ladies and gentlemen, the Hawks are respected by everybody and we are extremely proud of their achievements in their very short space of their existence. We all want them to be very successful in combating crime. Hence every media house will hang to every word that is uttered by the spokesperson.
However ladies and gentlemen, during all this pandemonium, fact and fiction started to blend in a way that many South Africans became confused and hence extremely agitated.
Accusations and counter-accusations began to fly and finger pointing became the order of the day. This became so serious that even people who are supposed to be working together in the interest of our patients in particular and our people in general started hurling insults and blame against each other.
Of all those involved, the Department of Health received the harshest criticism.
Newspaper editors, columnists, commentators and reporters were all united in condemning the negligence, carelessness and apparent incompetence of the Department of Health. We were harshly criticised for not protecting our citizens by allowing bogus doctors in our hospitals.
A matter that was supposed to be settled by simple facts was now determined by opinions, feelings, prejudice, innuendo, anger and presumptions.
Two very important institutions in the life of South Africans were in very precarious positions as serious doubts about their credibility were planted in the minds of citizens, i.e the Department of Health and the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA).
Clearly something was amiss in this whole saga.
The question is, are we really having doctors who have not qualified as such, being allowed to work for the State? Is the exam conducted by the HPCSA so simple that a totally untrained person, i.e a non-doctor can just move from the street, write and pass it and get the government to hire them and work for the State in such sensitive positions? Alternatively, just how easy is it to present forged documents to health authorities in South Africa, and end up being in charge of matters of life and death as a doctor among our people?
It is with this background ladies and gentlemen, that we decided to convene this press conference.
As you can see, we have with us a whole compliment of people or rather structures who were all part of the "theatre" that played itself out on the communication stage of our country in the past few days.
We have -
- General Anwa Dramat, the Head of the Hawks, our glorious crime fighting unit;
- Professor Sam Mokgokong, the newly appointed President of the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA), a body responsible for registration of our doctors and their ethical conduct;
- Ms M O'Reilly, the Acting Registrar of HPCSA;
- Dr Humphrey Zokufa, the CEO of Board of Healthcare Funders (BHF), a body responsible for issuing doctors in private practice with accreditation in the form of practice numbers;
- Mr Norman Mabasa, the Chairperson of South African Medidal Association (SAMA); and
- Ms Thembeka Gwagwa, the Secretary General of the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (DENOSA).
All have got a role to play in making sure that the highest standard of medical practice are observed and practised such that our people must feel safe and comfortable.
But all these people's roles and integrity were brought into sharp disrepute in the past few days.
There was also clear element of lack of information or rather misunderstanding about the role of each. Today, each is going to be given a chance to clearly explain their role, not only to clarify the present confusing situation but also to help South Africans in future when and if they seek medical attention from our institutions.
As the Minister of Health, I will start first:
While there are about six doctors who have been arrested by the Hawks on various charges, whereby it is generally and widely believed that they were all arrested because they are all bogus doctors, I wish to confine myself to one individual who is employed by the State. This is Dr Chike Valentine EZulu - re-christened by several media houses over the past days as EZulu or Zulu.
It is alleged that he is a bogus doctor and we hired him without first checking the facts or alternatively, that he presented fraudulent papers which fooled all of us in the Department. I want to reassure the nation that as the Department of Health, both National and in the Eastern Cape, have done everything professionally and administratively possible to bring Dr EZulu to work at B J Vorster Hospital. His file was opened in our unit, Foreign Workforce Management Programme on 24 April 2008.
All the normal prescribed work of checking every foreign qualified doctor who wishes to work in South Africa started then.
When he met all the criterion of such foreign qualified people, he was then referred to the HPCSA for accreditation.
As I said earlier, this is the only body in South Africa which has a statutory role to determine whether a doctor is actually qualified or not. I wish to emphasise that statutorily, this is the only body allowed to determine the qualifications or otherwise of doctors. As General Dramat will confirm, the Hawks do not have such a competency.
I won't get into the nitty-gritties of what the Hawks have arrested the doctor for, the General will explain that. I also won't explain what happened at the HPCSA after we handed over Dr EZulu to them to start determining qualifications and his suitability to work in South Africa, they will do it themselves because they are here.
Even after the HPCSA has cleared Dr EZulu and furnished us with his registration certificate and numbers which cleared him to work in South Africa, the Superintendent of Health in the Eastern Cape, Dr Siva Pillay, still subjected Dr EZulu to an interview. Dr Siva Pillay is himself a foreign qualified doctor who went through the same process Dr EZulu was subjected to.
But the purpose of the interview was to determine suitability of working in a far rural area alone without supervision. After Dr Siva Pillay satisfied himself, he sent Dr EZulu to a far rural hospital - B J Vorster Hospital.
The other stories we read in the newspapers about the suitability of Dr Ezulu to work in a hospital are very unfortunate. The apparent deaths that are supposed to have happened because of him I cannot defend as the matter will be subjudice to investigation by HPCSA as a case of either negligence or misconduct which have happened to other doctors before. And I cannot defend any doctor against any case of negligence, if any. On the contrary, I am on record as encouraging the Council to deal with any case of doctors misconduct or negligence hastily. So, I am not defending any doctor on that for sure, and I am not about to defend Dr EZulu for that. Proper procedures with the HPCSA will be followed since he is a registered doctor.
The other story I read about is that we in the Department should have suspected that Dr EZulu is a bogus doctor because he arrived in the hospital by taxi, alarmed and disturbed me very much. This is because if such is the criteria through which our people decide whether you a doctor or not, then I am also supposed to be classified as bogus. I arrived in King Edward VIII Hospital in January 1984 by taxi to start my internship for eight months following that , I moved around by taxi or buses.
I used the whole of my very first salary to pay for university fees of my younger brother. So, I could not afford to buy car and I used a taxi. I only read in a newspaper column that this is supposed to be offensive to our people.
Then came the issue of clothing. I never met Dr Ezulu but I know and have met doctors whose manner of dress leaves much to be desired. Much as we encourage doctors to be presentable, we cannot determine whether a person is a qualified doctor or not, simply because of what they are wearing.
There were many stories in newspapers that professes that lots of events that proved that Dr EZulu is actually not a doctor. Some of them are actually unfortunate events that do happen in our hospitals or in hospitals anywhere in the still developing world, but they evoke strong reactions from society because they are quite emotional issues. As I said, this will be left to the HPCSA to determine whether there was any wrong doing or not.
Having said this ladies and gentlemen, I do not wish to be misquoted as saying that Dr EZulu has no case to answer with the Hawks. He definitely does have a case to answer but it is not what I read about in the newspapers. General Dramat is here to explain that because the manner in which the Hawks Spokesperson brought it to the attention of the public is actually what prompted me to convene this press conference.
I brought nurses here because they were also implicated as having not done their job. This was very unfortunate.
What I want to state is that nurses have an extremely important role to play in the health care system. Contrary to what I read in the media, what I want to state is that they are first not there to take orders from doctors. They are there as part of the team and as Thembeka will attest, they do at times correct doctors mistakes or even stop them from engaging in practices that may be fatal to the patient. If there is something wrong with a doctor, they are the first to detect it.
Last week I gave an example of a nurse who caught a real bogus doctor in a hospital during the Bantustan era.
If the nurse I have referred to ever carried on the instruction of that gentleman who was pretending to be a doctor, the patient will have died instantly. But she refused and brought the matter to my attention and saved somebody's life.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is a well known fact that all over the world we do have con artists. We do have people forging anything from banknotes, cheques, certificates, passports, Ids and extending to identity fraud.
In the same vein we do have bogus lawyers, bogus accountants, bogus priests and bishops, bogus healers and indeed bogus doctors.
This has been the experience of the world. Hence, we cannot as the Department of Health or as Government or a country, stand here in front of your and claim that we are immune from such practices, either as victims or perpetrators.
But what we called you here for today, is to inform you that if this man Dr EZulu is a quack or a bogus doctor of some sort, we do not have any scientific or legal evidence of that. No agency, government or non-governmental statutory or otherwise, inside or outside the Republic of South Africa, has ever presented to us any evidence that effect. Even the Hawks have never presented such evidence to us. What they have presented to us General Dramat will expatiate on after I have completed my presentation.
So, as the Department of Health we are only guided by what we have for the past 2 years in processing his documentation, and what had been presented to us by the body qualified and empowered to do so the HPCSA.
I will now hand over to them to explain their role in the registration of doctors specifically in this case but generally in other cases.
BHF will explain their role in providing doctors in private practice with practice numbers.
General Dramat will then explain what case this particular doctor has to answer to because as I said earlier on, the doctor does indeed have a case to answer
I thank you.
Source: Department of Health
