Despite the Gauteng High Court having given all pregnant and breastfeeding mothers, and children under six, regardless of nationality or documentation, the rights to free health services, they are still being discriminated against, prompting human rights lawyers and activists to demand an inquiry into healthcare xenophobia.
They also want the Health Ombud and the Department of Health to hold institutions and their management accountable, reports News24.
Dr Jessica Rucell from the Sexual and Reproductive Justice Coalition (SRJC) said the ruling had followed an application brought by SECTION27 alongside women who had been denied access to such services. The application was supported by various organisations.
However, since and despite the ruling, SRJC and other organisations have received reports of numerous public health facilities (administrators and individual clinicians) demanding pregnant migrant women pay to access services.
There have also been cases of pregnant migrants being demanded to pay hospital balances for giving birth at a facility, and in other reports, being turned away from hospitals or subjected to threats, said Rucell.
She said Article 12 of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women emphasises that South Africa has an obligation to “take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in … healthcare to ensure, on a basis of equality of men and women, access to services, including those related to family planning”.
“We are deeply concerned by recent reports that Gauteng Health continues to demand payment balances and that mothers and newborns have been detained after discharge from the postnatal ward at Tambo Memorial Hospital until they have been able to bribe the unit to let them go home. This extortion is a shame to OR Tambo’s legacy,” said Kayan Leung an attorney at Lawyers for Human Rights.
Rucell said to lay the blame on non-nationals, who make up an estimated 6.5% of the overall population in South Africa, is to ignore the role of the state in the systematic and structural erosion of the healthcare system.
“The idea that non-nationals are draining the country of its resources is not only unsubstantiated but also diverts us from addressing the real issues and looking for real responses.”
The groups have called on the health ombud to initiate an inquiry into these practices and to hold institutions and their management accountable. They want the assurance of the right to free basic healthcare services regardless of mothers’ and children’s race, colour or country of birth.
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