Aaron Nicodemus
A labour arbitrator has reinstated two top officials from the Medicines Control Council (MCC) who were ousted during a purge of the drug-regulating body’s management in March 1998.
The former minister of health, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, axed the officials after the MCC’s refusal to approve clinical trials of the controversial Aids drug Virodene.
But the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) has now instructed the MCC to reinstate Johann Schlebusch as director of medicines registration and as registrar of the MCC.
The CCMA has also awarded Christel Brucker her old job as deputy director of medicines registration back.
Dlamini-Zuma herself has come in for a drubbing, the CCMA ruling that the Department of Health, then under Dlamini- Zuma’s control, “acted in a frivolous and vexatious manner” in defending its dismissal of the two employees.
The CCMA said the department “should have known from the outset that its conduct was wrong and unfair”. The arbitrator in the case noted that the former health minister had refused to attend the hearing, and had refused to disclose a report that might have shed some light on the matter.
At the time of their firing, there was considerable speculation within the MCC that Schlebusch and Brucker had been targeted because of their opposition to the government’s efforts to advance trials of Virodene.
Instead of pushing ahead with the trials, the MCC prompted a police investigation into the illegal use of Virodene by HIV-positive people. Virodene, whose main component is an industrial solvent used in dry cleaning, was later found to have little or no effect in controlling the Aids virus. The drug has proven to be a continual source of embarrassment for the government.
The two MCC officials were removed along with then MCC chair Peter Folb, after a review team concluded the MCC needed to be completely restructured. The team’s report recommended that top management be removed in order to make the changes possible. Folb later took a position in the pharmaceutical department at the University of Cape Town, while Schlebusch and Brucker were each reassigned to different jobs within the Department of Health.
A representative of the Department of Health, Nothemba Dlali, said this week the department was “considering” the arbitrator’s findings, but would offer no additional insight.
The CCMA noted that “it is clear that reinstatement of Schlebusch and Brucker will cause great turmoil in the department. They have been replaced and new systems installed.
“They will not be received back with open arms and they can expect to be met with great resistance.”
The arbitrator noted that upon their dismissal the employees “were unceremoniously removed from the office, escorted from the premises and treated like criminals”.
The arbitration hearing involved many top officials in the MCC, including MCC chair Helen Rees and current registrar of medicines Precious Matsotso.
Since the March 1998 dismissal of top management, 16 employees have resigned from the MCC and one committed suicide as a result of job- related stress, according to testimony before the CCMA.
The backlog of submissions for drug approvals to the MCC has increased from between 400 and 800 before the management bloodletting to currently over 2 600.