LHR to fight on for refugees

As scores of refugees living in South Africa continue to be excluded from healthcare services, Lawyers For Human Rights (LHR) says the fight to change this did not end with the death of Badesa Fokora, an Ethiopian refugee who died in November while taking the health minister to court.

Fokora was challenging the constitutionality of the National Health Act’s provision preventing him as a refugee from being placed in the chronic renal treatment programme in a public hospital. The case had to be struck off the roll after he died of renal complications.

The LHR’s Patricia Erasmus said they were planning to approach the minister’s office directly to negotiate whether the policy could be changed without the intervention of the courts.

The organisation said it was not calling for health services such as organ transplants and dialysis to be made available to all foreigners, only to refugees because they cannot return to their home countries even if they want to.

It says the policy is unconstitutional because it does not distinguish between refugees and other non-nationals.

“The National Health Act provides that transplants can only be given to citizens, which is understandable because they are expensive and a line has to be drawn somewhere. But the problem is it does not take into account the case of refugees who have no option of returning to their home countries to get treatment,” Erasmus said.

Fokora was first admitted to Helen Joseph Hospital in November but was discharged four days later after being told that both his kidneys were failing and there was nothing they could assist him with because as a foreigner he was not entitled to dialysis treatment. He died three weeks later after returning to the hospital three times.

“We are going to engage in talks with the minister but we are not ruling out the possibility of going to court if that does not work out,” Erasmus said.

This is as a Somalian refugee living in Cape Town, Ali Hussein, has been walking around with a bullet still in his arm because he does not have proper documentation.

Hussein was shot in a robbery in October and treated at Tygerberg Hospital but was told that an operation to remove the bullet could not be performed unless he had his refugee documents which were stolen during the robbery.

Erasmus said they had not received any instructions from Hussein to take the matter to court but that they would do so if he did.