The Sunday Times had not filed anything by Thursday evening in reply to court papers seeking the return of Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang’s medical records.
On Thursday afternoon, the health minister and the Medi-Clinic company filed a notice of motion for an urgent application in the Johannesburg High Court.
The notice states that respondents had until 3pm to oppose the application and 6pm to file answering affidavits.
An official in the Health Department, who did not want to be named, said the respondents had filed nothing by 6pm.
The court papers show the minister and Medi-Clinic are asking for the return and prohibition of use of various medical records and documents relating to the minister’s stay in a Cape Town hospital in 2005.
On August 12, the Sunday Times published a story about the minister’s alleged drinking while at the Cape Town Medi-Clinic for a shoulder operation.
On Monday, the hospital discovered that all the minister’s records were missing from its archives, and opened a case of theft with the police.
The notice of motion filed on Thursday calls upon four respondents –including Sunday Times editor Mondli Makhanya, journalists Jocelyn Maker and Megan Power, and Johnnic Publications, which owns and publishes the newspaper — to deliver various documents to the applicants’ lawyers by the close of business.
In her accompanying affidavit the minister calls the conduct of the respondents ”not only … unlawful” but ”high-handed as well”.
”Despite having knowledge of the fact that they have no legal entitlement to the records and notwithstanding the fact that they must by now have come to know that the records have been unlawfully and improperly removed … they nevertheless persist in holding on to the record, or copies thereof, and defiantly refuse to hand them over to us,” she says.
Tshabalala-Msimang says ”such conduct calls for censure in the strongest terms possible”.
The minister and Medi-Clinic ask for the return of all her hospital records and any other records of her medical treatment or condition.
The applicants also ask for an interdict to restrain the respondents from further comment on the records.
The respondents are also asked to destroy — under the oversight of the applicants’ lawyers — any reference to the records in the notebooks or computers of any of their employees.
The application also asks that the respondents be prohibited from gaining any unauthorised access to the minister’s hospital or medical records.
In her affidavit, Tshabalala-Msimang says various terms of the National Health Act have been violated.
These include the obligation of a clinic to keep records of all their patients, the right of a patient to have medical information kept confidential, and the obligation of health workers not to disclose medical information unless for legitimate purposes.
”I have a clear right to my privacy and dignity and to protect those rights,” the minister says.
”Unless the records are returned, I will suffer irreparable harm to my dignity and reputation.”
Earlier this week, the Sunday Times ignored a deadline by the minister to return documents relating to her medical condition.
The paper said the minister needed to ”provide a proper basis for her demand”.
Attempts to get hold of the Sunday Times on Thursday were unsuccessful. — Sapa