Johannesburg - Lovingly tending his garden and surrounded by his family accentuates the peace that Georgie van der Merwe now lives under after his experience as a Life Esidimeni patient.
The 60-year-old, from Lenasia, was among three people Gauteng Health MEC Gwen Ramokgopa visited on Sunday as the department continued its search for Life Esidimeni patients still unaccounted for.
Van der Merwe's niece, Nerisha Poonen, said her uncle was doing well and enjoyed his gardening.
“As you can see, the yard is very clean and neat, all thanks to my uncle. This garden is like his baby,” Poonen said.
At least 140 psychiatric patients died when the specialised facility was closed in 2016 and patients were relocated to unlicensed and under-resourced NGOs.
Van der Merwe’s location brings the number of unaccounted for patients down to 16 from more than 100. Five patients were found last week and more would be visited within the coming days, Ramokgopa said.
She said administrative problems with properly recording patients’ names and addresses, as well as family deaths which necessitated the moving of a person, were some of the main reasons for the department battling to locate its mental health clients.
Van der Merwe, the MEC added, was fetched by some relatives following the Esidimeni closure, where he lived with his late sister, and had to be moved to his family in Lenasia.
“What I would like to ask families to do is, if they have institutionalised family members, if they change the contact numbers, they must inform the institution. If they change addresses, they must inform the institution,” Ramokgopa said.
She added that when there was a family death and a patient changed homes, “we would also appreciate it that families inform institutions in which they are. That will make it easier (to keep track)”.
Xoliswa Juqu, who was also found by the department and visited by Ramokgopa, said in her family’s living room that she was happy to be home rather than at an institution.
Juqu, 30, who enthused about assisting with household chores, was also collected by her family shortly after Esidimeni’s closure, but couldn’t be accounted for because of a spelling error with her surname in the department's records.
“I was at institutions for three years before my family fetched me, and I’m happy to be home. I help out a lot here at home, but I miss the days of playing netball when I was at school,” Juqu added.
Ramokgopa said it was important for the department to work with the ward-based community to develop programmes which reached out to mental health patients under the provincial government’s care.
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