WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2008-04-28 Time: 00:00:00 Posted By: Jan
Doctors are up in arms at the suspension of a senior colleague at a KwaZulu-Natal hospital, for throwing a picture of KwaZulu-Natal Health MEC Peggy Nkonyeni into a dustbin. The doctors bluntly warned her that this would cost lives in Manguzi near the Mozambique border.
This dramatic confrontation followed the health department’s suspension of the local hospital’s chief medical officer, Dr Mark Blaylock, for a month without pay.
The protest came from the SA HIV Clinicians’ Society (SAHCS), the Rural Doctors Association of SA (Rudasa) and the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), which have demanded that Nkonyeni immediately reinstates him.
“We do not understand how a minor incident over a photograph of a politician could ever justify this,” added the SAHCS and Rudasa, which represent about 13 000 health workers, in a protest letter to the MEC.
They described the suspension as “a punishment not just of Dr Blaylock but (one that will) also be measured in lives lost in the Manguzi community”.
Blaylock is the only doctor at Manguzi Hospital able to do an emergency hysterectomy, and the most skilled doctor in surgery and anaesthetics, according to hospital sources.
He was informed this week of his suspension to “teach him a lesson”. The TAC this week urged its supporters to protest against Blaylock’s suspension by sending letters to Nkonyeni and ANC President Jacob Zuma.
“Mortality among young adults and infants has increased massively in the past decade. It is a province desperately short of health-care resources, particularly doctors willing to work in rural areas,” said the TAC. “One less doctor for one month almost certainly means lives lost in Manguzi.”
KZN Health spokesperson Chris Maxon said his department did not believe patients would suffer most and that Blaylock “has been advised of his right to appeal” against his suspension.
Commenting on the call for Blaylock to be reinstated, Maxon said “we will protect (institutional managers) from any intimidation or undue pressure that seeks to make them deviate from their quest to uphold and expect proper conduct from all public servants, without favour or fear”.
Apologised
Blaylock, who has diplomas in child health, anaesthetics and tropical medicine, has worked for the past six years at Manguzi, on the Mozambique border near Kosi Bay.
“I have given my heart and soul to this hospital, working far beyond my designated duties,” Blaylock said in a statement at his disciplinary hearing.
He apologised for throwing the picture in the bin, saying he had been provoked by statements made by the MEC during a visit to the hospital. She apparently said that rural doctors were interested in “profits, not caring about people” and that the anti-retroviral drug, AZT, was toxic.
“While I realise that it was an inappropriate action for which I apologise, I believe the MEC’s statements were extremely unfair and slanderous, and that was the direct cause of my irrational impulse,” said Blaylock.
Despite the fact that Nkonyeni’s remarks were made in front of a number of people, the health department’s Maxon this week denied that she had made them.
He also denied that she had been asked by Rudasa to explain her remarks. “(The MEC) cannot be asked to take a stand on statements she never made,” said Maxon. “The office of the MEC cannot recall any request to meet the MEC on this matter by Rudasa, had this been done at any stage, the MEC would have made the effort to meet them.”
But Rudasa, which has a mandate from the SA Medical Association to represent rural doctors, maintains that it has written more than once to the MEC to ask her “to explain or distance (herself) from these comments”.
The SAHCS and Rudasa said that they have asked her to explain her apparent slandering of rural doctors and to assure Manguzi staff of her “active, constructive and ongoing support”.
They have also requested a meeting with the MEC to “clarify how we can work constructively together”.
Blaylock is now considering a post in Canada, according to sources close to him.
South Africa has a serious shortage of doctors and nurses, and by 2000, one in five doctors trained in the country were already working abroad, according to a study by the Centre for Global Development.
Rudasa chairman Dr Bernard Gaede admitted that Nkonyeni’s slur on rural doctors had “demoralised our members”. Manguzi staff, who did not want to be named, said that they felt the health department had a “vendetta” against their hospital.
A few months back, another senior Manguzi doctor, Colin Pfaff, was charged with misconduct for raising donor money to buy the anti-retroviral drug AZT to supplement the treatment of pregnant women with HIV.
The disciplinary action against Pfaff, for seeking funds to implement “dual therapy” – an improved regimen to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission – provoked an unprecedented outcry. The department then withdrew charges against Pfaff, but a few weeks ago the MEC accused Pfaff and colleagues of being “opportunists” who had engaged in “wanton behaviour” and “anarchy”. – Health-e News Service