{"id":918158,"date":"2022-01-20T22:47:43","date_gmt":"2022-01-20T22:47:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/news\/2022\/01\/20\/former-health-official-denies-incompetence-in-life-esidimeni-inquest\/"},"modified":"2022-01-20T22:47:43","modified_gmt":"2022-01-20T22:47:43","slug":"former-health-official-denies-incompetence-in-life-esidimeni-inquest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/01\/20\/former-health-official-denies-incompetence-in-life-esidimeni-inquest\/","title":{"rendered":"Former health official denies incompetence in Life Esidimeni inquest"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Johannesburg – Former Gauteng Health Department official Hannah Jacobus admitted she \u201cdid nothing\u201d after she found some NGOs that received patients from Life Esidimeni were understaffed.<\/p>\n

Cross-examination of the former Gauteng Health Department official continued virtually in the Pretoria High Court on Thursday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Jacobus, who is now retired, is the sixth witness to be called in the Life Esidimeni inquest.<\/p>\n

The inquest, striving to determine what led to 144 mental healthcare users dying after being moved from Life Esidimeni facilities to NGOs in 2016, resumed this week.<\/p>\n

Jacobus was in charge of checking NGOs’ readiness to receive mental healthcare patients.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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MORE ON THIS<\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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Under cross-examination by Advocate Phyllis Vorster, Jacobus told the court she only found out that some staff at NGOs resigned due to non-payment after the transfer of patients took place.<\/p>\n

When asked what steps she had taken after finding out the NGOs were understaffed, Jacobus said she did not do anything.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went to [the NGOs] to assist with specific challenges, not to monitor or inspect,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Earlier, Jacobus admitted that conditions at NGOs that received patients from Life Esidimeni failed to meet the basic requirements for an organisation to care for mental healthcare users.<\/p>\n

She was cross-questioned on whether she raised such concerns with the former head of mental health at the Gauteng health department, Dr Makgabo Manamela.<\/p>\n

Jacobus\u2019 three-page statement about the payment for linen was brought to the fore as Vorster said by the time the statement around linen was produced, 77 healthcare users had died.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cBut people were dying and you were more concerned about whether linen was paid for.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou didn’t even know how many people had died but you were more concerned with payment of linen,\u201d Vorster said.<\/p>\n

Jacobus said there were other things that bothered her but she personally felt obliged that the payment of linen was supposed to be sorted out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Jacobus further said she was not in the office and not part of further discussions or deliberations to know about the deaths.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was out in the field, mostly in the Pretoria area, so my concentration was more on that side,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you had done your job properly, will people have died?\u201d asked Vorster.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI cannot attest to that,\u201d Jacobus said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen who must take responsibility?\u201d Vorster asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t know, Council,\u201d Jacobus said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Johannesburg – Former Gauteng Health Department official Hannah Jacobus admitted she \u201cdid nothing\u201d after she found some NGOs that received patients from Life Esidimeni were understaffed. Cross-examination of the former Gauteng Health Department official continued virtually in the Pretoria High Court on Thursday. Jacobus, who is now retired, is the sixth witness to be called […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-918158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-headlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=918158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=918158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=918158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=918158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}