Our crooked healthcare system isn't ready for assisted death

If I was not born and bred in South Africa, I know I would definitely argue that assisted death can work. Nonetheless, because of my observations, I'm convinced that assisted death will not work here.

The South Africa I know, in 2015, just in Gauteng state hospitals, faced 503 serious adverse events (SAEs).

An adverse event is any undesirable practice associated with the use of a medical product in a patient. The event is serious and mostly reported when it resulted in death, disability or permanent damage and prolonged hospitalisation.

The South Africa I know, in 2016, experienced deaths of 36 psychiatric patients who died after being transferred from private care facilities. That was after the health department terminated its contract with Life Healthcare Esidimeni.

Now, in such a dented South Africa, try to legalise physician-assisted death and see how many patients we will be left with. I assure you we will be left with empty wards but full mortuaries. Patients will suffer, especially our illiterate grandparents might be targeted by lazy nurses. It might sound like an accusation but the truth is some nurses get irresponsibly annoyed by our helpless and aged patients in the hospitals.

I have heard of incidents where patients are influenced by nurses to sign consent letters when they don't even know what they are signing for because of illiteracy. Sometimes the nurses and doctors explain something else to mislead the patient whereas the consent letter means something else.

So, in this case, our grandparents will be lied to and made to sign papers as if that's to give them better medications, when actually they would be signing to be accompanied to their graves.

Let us face reality, some nurses and medical doctors just don't give satisfactory care to patients, and they are not striving to make sure patients regain strength. Some don't even have the passion to work with people. When they address our elders they use demeaning language as if they are talking to kids.

I back the South African Medical Association which openly highlights that: "It is not ethical for doctors to help patients die, for doctors are not trained or supposed to kill."

Personally, I think if nurses and medical doctors kill, it would be out of their sloppiness not because the law has granted them the permission to do so.

Recently, Archbishop Desmond Tutu articulated these words: "My friend Lord Carey, the former archbishop of Canterbury, has passionately argued for an assisted-dying law in Britain. His initiative has my blessing and support - as do similar initiatives in my home country, South Africa, throughout the United States and across the globe."

It's a challenge for me to oppose the call because it is advanced by my leader. When the archbishop speaks I find it in my heart to stand firm and listen to him for I know he has a way of feeding hungry brains such as mine.

I respect him; he used his power to fight and stand for human rights. Archbishop Tutu has been active in several activities to campaign for the oppressed. He has also campaigned to fight HIV/Aids, tuberculosis, poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia.

As much as I entirely understand that Archbishop Tutu supports assisted death from the angle that "dying people should be able to choose how and when they would like to die", we should not ignore the fact that this initiative can otherwise affect the same "dying people" when they are not even given a chance to fight for their lives in hospitals.

Because some patients are sometimes too sick to even know what's going on, meaning some doctors or nurses can take advantage and fake consent letters to put those patients on assisted death.

Maybe I have all these worries because I know how the negligent and fraudulent actions of some doctors and nurses have tainted state hospitals in my country.

Myataza is a content developer at the Media and Writers Firm.