Johannesburg - Why did the Gauteng Health MEC not interrogate the evidence of the department’s own medical expert witness on the urgency of why a patient needed an emergency caesarean?
Why was it necessary that a medical negligence matter go to trial if both medical experts for the defendant and plaintiff agreed that urgent intervention was needed?
And why should the taxpayers shoulder the burden of paying for costs incurred during a trial, instead of MEC Qedani Mahlangu footing the punitive costs herself?
These were some of the questions Acting Judge Ronée Robinson, of the Gauteng Division of the High Court sitting in Joburg, said she wanted answered by next week Friday, when lawyers representing Mahlangu and the State Attorney file their heads of argument on an order based on a judgment earlier this month.
The order relates to the case of the now 34-year-old Vuyusile Eunice Lushaba, who in 2000 was neglected for two hours during the birth of her son Menzi at Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital.
As a result, Menzi, now 14, was born with spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy and cannot sit or walk.
On her October 16 judgment, Judge Robinson declared that the MEC was “100 percent” liable for Lushaba’s damages arising from birth as well as punitive costs, which include attorney fees, wasted costs on adjournments, expert report fees, medical costs and costs for pre-trial proceedings.
On her judgment, Judge Robinson said she failed to appreciate “why the taxpayer should bear the brunt for the failure by the public service to perform its duties adequately”.
And while on Tuesday was set down for Mahlangu’s counsel to detail why she shouldn’t be liable to personally pay for punitive costs which could run into hundreds of thousands of rand, Judge Robinson had other burning questions.
In her judgment, she noted: “It was common cause between the experts that abruptio placentae can lead to cerebral palsy. Indeed, the defendant’s (MEC) expert, Dr Mashamba, notes in the concluding remarks in his report: ‘With such serious complications following abruptio placenta, the outcome of Menzi is strongly associated with the complication the mother had just before delivery’.”
The “reckless attitude” to taxpayers’ money had to end, she said.
The Star