No end to crisis after Esidimeni

Takalani home still potential deathtrap

Still reeling from the devastating Life Esidimeni tragedy‚ patients at one of the homes at the heart of the crisis could run out of food as early as next week.

The Takalani Home for the Mentally Handicapped in Diepkloof‚ Soweto‚ has been left bankrupt by officials who were managing it during the time of the Esidimeni tragedy.

And now it has emerged that it has not received its subsidy funding from the Gauteng health department and may not be able to buy food from next week.

There are currently 110 people housed at the home.

During the Life Esidimeni crisis‚ 37 people died at Takalani and at the Masego Home for the Elderly in Krugersdorp. The two homes share a licence but it is unclear how this death toll is spread between them.

Yesterday Sowetan’s sister publication, TimesLIVE, joined Democratic Alliance MPL Jack Bloom on a visit to Takalani.

Director of the home Judgement Gumede detailed the financial woes to Bloom‚ who had visited to see if there was any improvement after the Life Esidimeni crisis.

Gumede told Bloom that in 2010 the High Court in Johannesburg had interdicted the then board of Takalani from performing its duties after allegations of corruption and theft of funds.

An interim administration team was established to run the facility. It was during this administration that the Gauteng department of health moved 1 712 psychiatric patients from Life Esidimeni care facilities to NGOs which were not fit to host them. A total of 143 of these patients died.

During the Life Esidimeni arbitration hearings‚ retired deputy chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke, said Takalani was a “death trap” and that “women were exposed to potential rape”.

Two psychiatric patients also contracted typhoid at the facility due to poor hygiene.

Takalani now houses 110 patients in total. Of these‚ 58 are severely intellectually disabled people – 30 males and 28 females‚ aged six to 24.

Gumede detailed the state of affairs: “When we came in we had no records. Records had just gone out of the institution. Critical information for the running of the institution was deleted on the computers by the previous management.”