They say they have suffered personal humiliation, ruined careers, physical illness and stress – all because they were hoodwinked by hospital group Netcare and nephrologist Jeff Kallmeyer into participating in a cross-border “cash for kidneys” transplant scheme.
Surgeons and specialists Professor John Robbs and Professor Ariff Haffejee, Neil Christopher and Mahadev Naidoo, and former Netcare transplant unit staffers Lindy Dickson and Melanie Azor – who have also become doctors – put the blame for their predicament squarely at Netcare’s door, but say the State has also singled them out unfairly.
They now want a Durban High Court judge to stop the State from proceeding with charges against them.
The charges relate to 90 “illegal” transplant operations performed at Durban’s St Augustine’s Hospital in which, it is alleged, poor Brazilians donated their organs to wealthy Israeli kidney patients for cash.
When the doctors appeared in Durban’s Commercial Crime Court on Monday, their criminal matter was postponed for six months to allow their application for a permanent stay of prosecution, based on an undue delay in their prosecution and unfair discrimination, to be heard in the Durban High Court.
“If the donors and recipients were not related and payment was made for the kidneys, we did not know about it,” Robbs says.
“We were not involved in setting up, implementing or administering the transplant programme. We were, quite simply, engaged to render our respective surgical services.”
Robbs says a statement by Belinda Rossi, Netcare’s former national transplant co-ordinator, shows that virtually the entire SA transplant community – and the National Blood Transfusion Service, “which turned a blind eye for a handsome fee” – had been involved in the programme brokered by Israeli Ilan Perry, yet only they had been singled out for prosecution.
Robbs names surgeons and specialists who, he says, performed similar operations in Cape Town, Joburg and at another Durban hospital, and says it is “highly probable” they too were hoodwinked.
Rossi says Netcare CEO Richard Friedland knew what was happening, but had dismissed her suspicions regarding the Brazilian donors.
Robbs says cross-border transplants were not unusual, bearing in mind the exchange rate and cost of surgery here.
Robbs says statements in the docket show that Kallmeyer – who is living in Canada and who has paid a R150 000 admission of guilt fine – was instrumental in persuading the doctors to render surgical services without disclosing the true state of affairs.
The impact on their lives since their arrest had been huge, made worse by a “hostile press”, Robbs says.
His career had stagnated, international invitations had been withdrawn, as was a proposed honorary fellowship, and he was no longer provided with sessional employment at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
Haffejee was suffering from depression. He had had to cancel trips overseas, and an invitation to participate in a book had been withdrawn.
Christopher was suffering from anxiety and had withdrawn from public life, while Naidoo’s teaching sessions at the university had been cancelled after nine years.
Dickson – who has cancer – and Azor also blame Netcare and Kallmeyer.
The State has until March to file its opposing papers, after which the matter will be set down for argument. - The Star