A woman who was originally from the DRC and who gave birth at Steve Biko Academic Hospital three years ago has been unable to access healthcare for herself or her son since then because she couldn’t pay the R110 028 the hospital demanded, even though she had said both she and her husband were unemployed.
She was told to pay R300 to be discharged and ordered “to never seek any form of health services, either for me or my son at any public health facility anywhere in Gauteng until the outstanding amount has been settled”, she told Health-e News.
Her son has missed almost all of his childhood immunisations and is always sick, she added, and she was afraid she might be arrested if she visited any public health facility in the province.
Against the law
The National Health Act decrees that pregnant or breastfeeding women and children under six are entitled to healthcare services at any level after an April order by the Gauteng High Court upheld the right of all pregnant and lactating women and children under six, regardless of nationality and documentation status, to have free health services at all public health facilities, including hospitals.
Yet since the ruling, civil society organisations say they continue to receive reports of pregnant migrant women being ordered to pay for services at clinics and hospitals in Gauteng.
Human rights lawyer at SECTION27 Sibusisiwe Ndlela said they were collecting statistics to present before the court in the next three months.
Kayan Leung, an attorney at Lawyers for Human Rights, said a number of mothers and newborns have also been detained after discharge from Tambo Memorial Hospital until they have been able to bribe the unit to let them go home.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Call for inquiry into ‘systemic healthcare xenophobia’ against migrants in SA
Gauteng clinics still denying treatment for pregnant migrants
Migrant health rights’ struggles not over yet