We, health professionals and healthcare workers, academics, medical scientists and researchers, veteran healthcare activists and representatives of civil society concerned with and about the condition of public healthcare services hereby declare that:
1. The irrefutable deterioration of the public healthcare service, the principal agency that underpins the constitutional entitlement of access to all necessary care, is a gross violation of the rights of all who live in SA and is an unconscionable assault on the wellbeing of patients attending public health facilities.
2. Conditions of service that prohibit health personnel from speaking publicly on these deficiencies are reminiscent of apartheid-era practices to stifle rightful dissent and public disclosure and are contrary to the constitutional order.
3. Victimisation of healthcare professionals who expose the profound administrative deficiencies plaguing public health facilities is accelerating the outward migration of health professionals who can no longer endure the moral injury caused by working in conditions that violates their ethical obligations.
4. We stand four-square behind healthcare workers subjected to unfair disciplinary sanction for publicly disclosing intolerable conditions at most provincial health facilities.
We, therefore, demand the following:
1. The immediate and unequivocal cessation of all disciplinary action against Dr Tim de Maayer and his colleagues and the institution of an independent inquiry...
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