The Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) has doubled down to protect Groote Schuur Hospital doctors accused of the unauthorised removal of a patient's life support that resulted in death (euthanasia) and hospital and Western Cape Health Department administrators who covered it up. As I related in a previous post , on 31 May 2019 the HPCSA's Third Medical Committee of Preliminary Inquiry (committee) exonerated doctors Ahmed Al Sayari, Marcelle Crowther and Mikhail Botha and Trauma Centre head Prof. Andrew Nicol, CEO Bhavna Patel and WCHD head Dr Beth Engelbrecht. I requested the committee's rationale and doctors' responses but despite promising to do so, they only sent the responses excluding Nicol's second statement (2019) which they refuse to. The committee and CEO/registrar Dr Raymond Billa, who nominally investigates the public's complaints and assured me they're an "advocate for the public", cleared the doctors based ...
Blog on medical and health matters with a focus on the Western Cape's public health system.