Health MEC is overseas as families of dead patients sob at arbitration hearing
Qedani Mahlangu, who oversaw moving patients out of Life Esidimeni care into NGOs, where 118 died, is in London — where activists are knocking at the door
The ANC provincial executive committee (PEC) has said that it knows former Gauteng Health MEC Qedani Mahlangu is overseas‚ and that it gave her permission to leave to start studying in the UK in August. There have been growing calls from families who lost loved ones for her to appear at the arbitration hearings after 118 patients died after being moved from Life Esidimeni’s care. Mahlangu spearheaded the project to move 1‚712 patients out of Life Esidimeni psychiatric homes into non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and hospitals. She told families there was no money for mental health patients. Testimony has detailed how she ignored warnings from relatives‚ civil society‚ Life Healthcare staff and psychiatrists not to follow through with the plans to shut down psychiatric homes. At the hearings over the past three weeks‚ families have testified how patients were taken on trucks to NGOs "like sheep to slaughter"‚ and some appeared to have been starved to death.
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