Life Esidemeni doctor recalls harrowing details
Movement of mentally ill not the first tragedy
A tearful former Life Esidimeni executive made shocking revelations yesterday that the tragedy that left 141 people dead was not the first to result from the movement of mentally ill patients.
The revelations were made by Dr Morgan Mkhatshwa, who was managing director of Life Esidimeni until July.
Mkhatshwa told the arbitration hearing chaired by retired deputy chief justice Dikgang Moseneke that in 2007 about 16 mentally ill children were discharged from Life Esidimeni’s Baneng children’s unit to a Soweto centre for mentally challenged children.
He said children who survived the ordeal returned to Baneng severely dehydrated.
Baneng caters for children with severe mental illness.
“We did not want a repeat of that,” he said, explaining his refusal to sanction the movement of more than 2 000 mentally ill patients to NGOs across Gauteng last year.
Mkhatshwa said even last year the department wanted to remove mentally ill children from Baneng but he refused.
He said the Gauteng health department reminded him and other Life Esidimeni officials that the patients were not theirs but the department’s.
According to Mkhatshwa, requests for the list of the identified 163 NGOs to help them get accreditation and training were rejected by department officials, including its head Dr Barney Selebano and mental health director Dr Makgabo Manamela. “It was sad for me to see how clinicians could succumb to political pressure.”
He said former health MEC Qedani Mahlangu, Selebano and Manamela told Life Esidimeni managers they were cancelling the company’s contract because the department did not have a budget.
The decision, Mkhatshwa said, was beyond rationality, clinically and business-wise.
He said the department once sent an old, open bakkie to fetch a group of mentally ill patients but he refused. He said Life Esidimeni would be told today to discharge patients the following day.
Mkhatshwa said he approached Selebano for the department to buy Life Esidimeni out or take over its facilities and the head of department told him to come up with proposals.
He said he did but never heard from the department. He said he believed Life Esidimeni’s figures of clinically approved discharges were tampered with to suit the department’s agenda.
Mkhatshwa left Life Esidimeni because he could not bear it anymore. “This was a very traumatic experience for me. I wouldn’t see it for another day.”