Thomas Johnson - Medical Blog

Email on 15 January 2019 to the Health Professions Council of South Africa Legal Department's Keabetswe Mokwena (see here ).  To: Keabetswe Mokwena  cc Minister of Health, Chief Clerk Director of Public Prosecutions, Health Ombudsman, HPCSA Ombudsman Ms Mokwena  I've not heard from you again by December as promised. For information, see my blog post  here . Suffice it to say, your unaccountable delays  –  it's been over a year since I laid the complaints with no explanation for them and overall lack of communication  –  indicates the HPCSA is violating patient rights and health laws you're meant to defend, not transparent and fair to complainants (me), dysfunctional to what extent I don't know, compromised and like Cape Town's DPP, reluctant to prosecute politically sensitive cases as this one is.  What's one elderly woman's death under suspicious circumstances in a state hospital and the Western Cape government'...

During October and November 2017 I laid charges with the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) against Groote Schuur Hospital and Western Cape Health Department doctors and officials relating to the treatment and death of my mother, Helen Johnson, under suspicious circumstances while under their care in 2017. Related to this, I laid culpable homicide and other charges with the police in September 2017. In April 2018 Cape Town’s Director of Public Prosecutions declined to prosecute without really investigating (see  here ).  And similar to the DPP with whom she irregularly had  ex parte  discussions about the case in November 2017, Premier Helen Zille pre-emptively exonerated head of the Western Cape Health Department Dr Beth Engelbrecht, hospital CEO Dr Bhavna Patel who had promised but then declined to investigate and others without reading my complaints or investigating, which itself is a violation of health legislation.  But as far as they’...

The following posts relate to my mother's case (see here ) and were previously posted on my general blog, Letters from the Cape . I'm now including them under under the subject matter of this blog, Groote Schuur Negligence. (Long read.) Adv. Rodney de Kock. My mom died in July 2017. Why no arrests?   To: Adv. Rodney de Kock, Director of Public Prosecutions, Cape Town  Copy: National Director of Public Prosecutions Adv. Shaun Abrahams Dear Mr De Kock Refer to my letter of 19 March 2018. My mom died at Groote Schuur Hospital on 7 July 2017 of "unnatural causes".  You have had the docket including post-mortem report and medical negligence opinion since January 2018. Last year, after the South African police did nothing on the case for four months, I literally did their work for them and handed a sworn statement to you and expedited the collection of the post-mortem reports so they could deliver them to you. You have not even taken statements from any of...