Handle problems where they occur

THERE appears to be a gaping hole in Health MEC Phumza Dyantyi’s argument that her department’s legal representation in court claims needs to be outsourced because the state attorney’s office is not doing its job properly.

It is decidedly odd that she should make this allegation when the Justice Department has lashed back, saying the vast majority of such cases – 97% – had been settled on the instruction of health officials because there was no prospect of successfully defending them.

Justice officials are understandably aggrieved at being accused of not fighting vigorously enough when it is the MEC and her own people who are telling them that it’s advisable to settle.

But quite apart from the added costs which would be topping up an already mammoth R17-billion claims bill by the hiring of private lawyers, is the burning question of why the health department is being sued to this extent.

That surely must be at the forefront of any attempts to bring down the staggering cost of claims rather than trying to find a supposedly stronger – and pricey – legal team to fight them.

What needs to happen is for Dyantyi to get to the bottom of exactly what is going wrong at state hospitals that is leading to this litany of medico-legal claims against them.

These cases typically involve failings in the areas of obstetrics and gynaecology so that would be the natural starting point for any thorough investigation by experts out in the field who know what they need to look for – and how to go about fixing it.

Aside from stemming the stream of lawsuits, what the MEC should also consider is how getting to the root of the problem would ultimately restore much faith in the government’s ability to provide an acceptable standard of healthcare – because that certainly has been lost given her current legal woes.