Special Hearings — Health Sector Hearings — 1997-06-18

CHAIRPERSON: Max I wonder if I can ask academic question of the Professor and deal with other questions as well.

UNKNOWN: Sure.

CHAIRPERSON: I have three questions and perhaps the others may have a few others as well.  The first one relates to something that was said yesterday by a young man from KwaZulu Natal who joined the military medical core and the impression was created that young medics, medic in the sense of someone who went as a male nurse, not a medical student, was sent to Black hospitals, Black clinics to practice.  Dr Barker gave a different viewpoint this morning.  I want to ask the question in relation to Alex Clinic.  You've mentioned the long relationship that the University had with Alex Clinic and I know Dr Wilson's here as well, so I welcome him. This question relates to pre-1985 essentially.  What supervision was there of students who went to Alexander Clinic to practice primary health or to learn about primary health care from the University?
 Number two is a situation pertained at Alex Clinic in 1984 and 1985 where almost the same number of babies were born as at the Johannesburg hospital but the environment in which it took place was one of a big room, perhaps the size of many of our bedrooms with a toilet sitting in one corner.  Did the University ever take any note of that in developing the culture that you're talking about?
 Can I just pose all my questions. The second one is to do with your Professional and Ethical Standards Committee. Very important issues were taken up, debated within the University. My question is, how far was that taken beyond, if you like, the walls of the university into discussions with other universities with the SAMDC, with MASA?
 Then the third one relates to what you were saying Professor Jenkins was going to talk about, which is, from your submission it appears you consulted widely and clearly what comes out is that there's a lot of anger, particularly amongst Black professionals within the University.  What is the University going to be doing about that in the future?  Thank you.

UNKNOWN: Mr Chairman may I answer your third question first then it won't disturb my train of thoughts as much. In the process of soliciting views from the Faculty and past students in preparing for this submission, it became clear as you said, there was a great deal of anger about what these people perceived was an inferior education that they'd reserved at Wits.  This anger is directed against the Health Sciences Faculty as much as it is against the Provincial Authorities, if not more.  This is compounded by their view that the discrimination in health service delivery, in employment practices and in status between White and Black hospitals persists today.  What's changed is a common question that we heard, what's changed in the last seven years?
 There is disappointment that senior members of the Faculty who were seen to have supported apartheid medicine, have not acknowledged the affront called by the Faculty to the dignity of it's Black students and staff. And in my understanding of the philosophy behind the TRC, I have the idea that for the TRC to be effective, to be fully effective, requires that the processes taken into the places where people live and work and interact.  We need in fact a mini-TRC in our institutions, and we believe that this mini- TRC process has already been triggered within our faculty in these last few weeks. 
 A great deal of hard work though and creative thinking will undoubtedly be needed if members of the Faculty are to be reconciled with one another.  The privileged members of the Faculty, who were not the victims of apartheid in the teaching hospital settings, must listen to the accounts of their Black colleagues and former students.  They must be reminded of the many ways in which they wittingly or unwittingly collaborated with the system.  They must be prepared to experience and share some of the pain and hurts which their colleagues of colour experienced because of an accident of birth. In such a process we believe we will all undergo changes and experience healing and only then will the Faculty be able to develop into a cohesive structure capable of producing well-trained health care professionals motivated to serve the South African community. 
 So we can't really over emphasise the importance of this submission being a beginning of a process which we are committing ourselves to pursue.
 Then do you want me to answer the other question Max?
 The Professional Ethical Standards Committee which has met for 16 years now regularly has done very little, I must confess, as far as relationships with other medical schools are concerned, we heard from Francis Ames yesterday, that they constituted a similar committee at about the same time, namely after our disillusionment with the record of the SAMDC and the MASA, and certainly we've had very little contact with the SAMDC or the MASA in any organised way.  I might say that we have often used the journal of the MASA to bring our viewpoints and publish comments on events of the times and the SAMDC have certainly been included in criticisms from the Committee.  The Registrar has been brought over to the Medical School to participate in the teaching of ethics, certainly, and has been challenged by students in those sessions. 
 The supervision of students at Alex, are you happy to deal with that Max, because I have some views but not many?
 Well I just know that during times of crises there as a member of staff with colleagues we would go along there and certainly help supervise in the evenings and at weekends.  Whether they got good supervision from a geneticist or occupational medicine professors who I remember there, I don't know, but certainly we stood alongside them whilst they were confronted by some of the nasty episodes during the mid-fifties.  
 I don't know anything about the deliveries of babies there, perhaps you do Max.