Esidimeni: more questions

Much has been said and written about the treatment meted out to Life Esidimeni patients who were transferred, the lack of care at most of their new places of abode and the inhuman manner in which most were transported.

Little attention has been given to describing the conditions at Esidimeni from which they were extracted. Who owned and ran Esidimeni? Who were the staff? What was their training? What was the cost per patient per month? Is there a different understanding of what it means to be mentally ill and the appropriate way to treat such people? Why did the Gauteng health authorities glibly believe you did not require appropriate training for a range of complex mental conditions?

What needs to be evaluated is why there appears to have been a different understanding of those conditions. How come those senior officials involved in the decision, all apparently registered doctors, seemed to have such a casual approach? What retired deputy chief justice Dikgang Moseneke revealed in his assessment is a blatant failure on the part of the authorities to understand and accept the true nature of the varied complex conditions of those patients.

There may be another element that is related to deep-seated attitudes to mentally ill patients. If this is not considered, we could see the same disaster emerging in other provinces.

Ron Legg Hillcrest