Cape Town - In an unprecedented move triggered by the Cyril Karabus case, the World Medical Association (WMA) will advise physicians around the globe about the risks of working in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
It has encouraged its 102 member countries to do the same in a decision made at a WMA council meeting in Bali late last week.
At first, the SA Medical Association (Sama) pushed for the world association to call for health workers to boycott the UAE, but it settled on the advisory instead.
Karabus, 78, the retired Cape Town paediatric oncologist who has been detained there for about eight months, was acquitted of a manslaughter charge two weeks ago, but last week the prosecution announced it planned to appeal.
Since being released on bail about six months ago, Karabus has been staying with fellow South African doctor Elwin Buchel in Abu Dhabi.
On Sunday, in a phone interview with the Cape Times, Karabus said he was set to appear in a UAE court again on Tuesday.
He said he had been told about the WMA advisory and while he hoped it would have an impact, he did not believe it would affect UAE authorities.
“I don’t think they care … I don’t think they’ll take too much notice,” Karabus said.
He believed a call for medics to boycott the UAE would have been more effective and possibly make authorities take note.
At the council meeting in Bali, where scores of physicians from across the world gathered, the WMA passed a resolution saying it believed Karabus was being treated in a manner “which fails to meet international fair trial standards and he should be allowed to return home immediately”.
“The meeting also decided that in the light of this experience, the WMA will publish an advisory notice in the World Medical Journal and on the WMA website advising doctors thinking of working in the UAE to note the working conditions and the legal risks of employment there.
“The WMA will also encourage its 102 member associations to publish similar advisory notices in their national publications,” a statement on the WMA’s website said.
On Sunday, Mzukisi Grootboom, the Sama spokesman who was involved in the resolution and had just returned from the WMA council meeting, said he had been told the association had “never done anything close to this” before.
He was told it was “unprecedented”, he said.
He did not know what to make of the prosecution’s decision to appeal Karabus’s acquittal. “We’re not sure if this is done to spite him,” he said.
Since Karabus’s arrest in the UAE in August, Sama had been calling for the WMA to advise medical workers to boycott the UAE. Since December, Sama had also been writing to the WMA about Karabus’s case.
Grootboom said even though the WMA did not agree to the boycott of the UAE, the advisory to physicians about the risks of working there was a step forward.
The WMA had agreed to:
* Publish the advisory on its website.
* Alert its 102 member countries, spread across North and South America, west and east Europe, Asia and some
African countries, of the advisory.
* Publish the advisory in the World Medical Journal.
On Sunday, Karabus’s South African lawyer Michael Bagraim said he had been receiving e-mails from medical associations “across the globe”.
He said if Karabus was detained even longer, it could seriously impact on health workers travelling to the UAE.
“It looks very strongly that doctors worldwide would boycott going there,” Bagraim said.
Karabus was arrested in the UAE while in transit through Dubai on August 18 and released on bail two months later.
He had been tried in absentia and convicted of manslaughter and falsifying documents after the death of a three-year-old in 2002 at the Sheikh Khalifa Medical Centre in Abu Dhabi, where he had been a locum.
Karabus was sentenced to four years in jail.
Cape Times