Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang will go to the Johannesburg High Court on Friday to protect her reputation, the Star reported.
Court papers show the minister and Medi-Clinic are asking for the return and prohibition of the use of various medical records and documents relating to the minister’s stay in a Cape Town hospital in 2005.
According to the Star newspaper, the Sunday Times had returned its copy of the records of the minister’s controversial hospital stay in 2005 on Thursday. The paper said that the Sunday Times, apparently in good faith, ”is understood to have ensured that its only copy was given to the clinic”.
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.
Tshabalala-Msimang’s application was expected to be heard by Judge Winton Msimeki on Friday morning.
The minister is suing in her personal capacity and not as a member of Cabinet.
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 had called upon four respondents — Sunday Times editor Mondli Makhanya, journalists Jocelyn Maker and Megan Power, and Johnnic Publications, which owns the newspaper — to deliver various documents to the applicant’s lawyers by close of business on that day.
In her accompanying affidavit, the minister calls the conduct of the respondents ”not only … unlawful” but ”high handed as well”.
Despite knowing ”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 records, or copies thereof, and defiantly refuse to hand them over to us,” she said.
Tshabalala-Msimang says ”such conduct calls for censure in the strongest terms possible”.
The applicants also ask for an interdict restraining the respondents from further comment on the records.
The respondents are also asked to destroy — under the oversight of the applicant’s lawyers — any reference to the records in the notebooks or computers of any of their employees.
The application further stipulates that the respondents be prohibited from gaining 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 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.” — Sapa